The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

Guitar can be a futsy instrument once a person wishes to push it's boundaries. Fingerpicking is a natural fit for pushing the guitar's cabalilities without bankrupting a beginner's desire for learning, but there are difficulties particular to fingerpicking that naturally challenge the way a person had previously thought of guitar. What makes the guitar simple to learn is that there are a set number of chords that we can plug in and play as needed without worrying about what makes them sound good together. The tradition of acoustic guitar in pop music is one of easy to learn conventions, once a person gets the hang of it. Fingerpicking challenges those historical habits nicely. All of a sudden, the guitar is melodic instrument instead of one that is just supporting the rhythm.

Paul McCartney's Blackbird is a fantastic example of a melodic fingerpicking piece. To a music-nerd like me, there are three melodies: The bass line, the open G string that rings throughout, and the melody that is played mostly on the B string. Three melodies! If you like this song, you'd notice that there is an open, ringy, almost jangly texture to the guitar part. This is what it sounds like when these three melodies are connected. Each melody is unbroken and sing-able. When the melodies don't connect to each other, it's not quite as sing-able. It sounds spare and sparse, but not in the good way. It sounds like a bit more practice is needed! Connecting each melody is not something we guitarists are naturally adept at, but playing Blackbird puts us face-to-face with that limitation and gives us a chance to do something different.

Whereas the guitar is usually used merely to take up sonic space in a song, fingerpicking makes the guitarist completely aware that there is more to it than simply choosing a chord and keeping the strumming going. Guitar suddenly becomes an entire ensemble to manage. Managing it, in my opinion, is well-worth the effort.

I remember friends in college comparing Mozart and Beethoven.  At this point in my life, 9 years later, I don't think there is a comparison! Both are just so distinct and well regarded that it wouldn't feel right to put them on a teeter-totter.  

According to one friend, Mozart had the melody, and Beethoven had the chords.  Um, What about the 5th symphony?  What about "Ode to Joy?"  I think both of them had it. Anyhow, I wonder how those guys approached writing melody.  Mozart seemed to just bubble to the top with melody.  His work is populated with them.  However, he didn't really challenge the harmonic status-quo until much later in his life, towards the end actually.  It seemed that Beethoven challenged the norms of harmonic structure his entire life.  This doesn't mean he just ignored melody though.  How can a person not get "Ode to Joy" totally stuck in their head?

With luck I won't make a value judgment, but I think there is something to creating melodies that are hummable.  Don't get me wrong.  Any melody that comes from the heart (cheesy but true) is a good melody.  But the hummable ones?  Maybe that's what get's me.

Hey look at that- I just compared Beethoven and Mozart.  Oops.

Yesterday I brought up the point that melody can come from just playing a chord. When a person creates a melody from an already existing chord, they are able to use whatever part of the scale they would like over it, as long as it sounds good with their ears of course. I think there is yet another way that is just becoming clearer to me, and that is to come up with the melody first.

If you are like everyone, there has been times when you just can't get a melody out of your head. It could be "Like a Virgin" by Madonna. It could be "Wonderwall" by Oasis [this is a great song to sing if you have a different song in your head!]. The point is that the melody is so memorable that you could sing it in the car at the drop-of-a-hat. I have a huge gut feeling that these very singable melodies came first, before there were any chords created for the song.

Try this out:

Take the phrase, "I want to be a lover, I want to be discovered," and hum it in your mind. Randomly put pitches to them. Randomly give one word emphasis over another. After you are singing the same thing over and over, then see if you can put some chords to it.

If you do this, comment back and tell me about your experience!!!