Guitar Chord Playing, No Strings Attached

Cafe Society
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      • Got a minute? Good. Teach me how to play guitar…
        ~
        I am using a MIDI program to create some music, and I want to include some rhythm guitar chords but I don’t know nuts 'bout musical things.
        I got a couple questions:
  • The on-screen MIDI keyboard is labeled C1 through C10, spaced at each octave. A standard guitar stringing is EADGBE. In regard to how the keyboard is marked, what keys do these open strings fall on?
  • I can find chord references online, but is moving up or down one fret the same as moving up or down one key on a keyboard?
  • Cakewalk Home Studio specific: C-HS has a large included guitar chord library, but I can’t get it to play any of them normally. I can add chords to notes in the staff view, and there’s a “preview” button that works (it plays the chord when the Chord Properties dialog box is open), but when the song is played normally, only one key plays, not the chord. -?
  • The chord library has a couple hundred chords at least. A few are noted as “standard”, but most of the others share one of a few names, but use different notes and strings. Why is this?
  • Is there any rule to generating guitar chords, or is it just whatever notes are usable in combination and harmonize together? If I try to fake my own 6-note chords, there always seems to be at least one note that sounds “wrong”. - DougC
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I simply don’t have the time or the knowledge to answer all of your questions (I have worked with friends who have Cakewalk, but I have never used it myself).

A couple of easy ones, though:

  1. Yes, playing a chord (a barre chord, presumably) the next fret up raises the tone of the chord one half step. If you are using that chord as the first note in your scale (i.e., the tonic) then you changed key one half step as well.

  2. In terms of constructing chords - do two things: invest in a cheap guitar chord book (or find the equivalent online) and talk to a guitarist. You need to find out what chord configurations are most commonly used (also referred to as “voicings” of chords) - the G chord can be played many, many different ways - which ways are the most common or at least the ways used by artists you like? Also, please be aware that most of the time a guitarist is NOT playing all six strings - one or two (or even three or four) strings are being muted by one or the other hand so that only strings that are part of the desired chord get to vibrate. Heck, especially when play a distorted electric, it is harder to learn how to stop strings you don’t want heard than it is to play the strings you do want heard…

Hope this helps,

WordMan

3

I believe the midi convention is to label middle C as “C4”.

Regardless, the highest guitar string is the E just above middle C. The others go down from there ending with the low E just above C2 - this is the E just below the bass clef. Note that these are low notes! The guitar is a baritone instrument.

To confuse you, guitar music is usually written an octave up and some software takes that into account. Not usually a problem since intuitively you will work it out but it makes a difference if you compare it to a piano.

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Getting realistic guitar playing in MIDI is extremely hard if you’re programming from a keyboard. The way a guitar is arranged is different enough that a keyboard imitation always sounds faked. I’ve heard some very good implementations, but without fail they have been recorded straight from a real guitar with a MIDI adapter, not from a keyboard.

However, if you plan to press ahead…

You need to learn at least the basic chords on a guitar. You don’t need to learn how to do them yourself, but you need to know how the guitarist would place his fingers to get the chord. This tells you if the chord is inverted in some way or not. The root note, however, is always the lowest key. Get hold of a chord table that show the chords, there’s plenty you can get hold of on the internet.

There many different ways of playing a chord on a guitar. There is also more than one way to tune the guitar as well. I would start with just the standard ones at first. As has been already pointed out; not all six strings are always played. On the tables you download you will see some marked with an X. That means you do not play that string. O means they are played ‘open’, i.e. they are not fingered and played just as they are tuned.

Guitars are strummed. This means the notes are not struck at exactly the same time. The first string leads slightly, followed by the second, then third… etc… The higher the pitch the shorter the sustain. The strum itself can be an upstroke (leading with the highest note) or a downstroke (leading with lowest base note). Guitarist use both, usually in turn but not always. How they alternate between the two has a big effect on the sound and rhythmn of the tune.

Guitars pitch bend. Not such an issue in chords, but can happen. You can try doing this to mimic how a guitarist might do it, I’ve never managed to replicate it with any success.

Guitarist, no matter how good, hit the occasional bum note when they touch a string in the chord that they shouldn’t. They also have fret noise when they move their hands up and down the fret, particularly if they are using an acoustic guitar. General Midi has a fret noise patch. Use it, but don’t go over the top. Little flaws like these make the guitar sound a lot more realistic.