Learning Music Written for Other Instruments
- The American Guitar Academy
- 14 minutes ago
- 7 min read
When a guitar player plays their favorite pentatonic scale, and a piano player does the same, the notes will be identical; the A minor pentatonic scale contains the same notes, regardless of what instrument it is played on. However, the way each instrumentalist would visualize that scale is different because of how their particular instrument is laid out.
The approaches, pathways and positions of any scale or arpeggio is going to change between every instrument and, as a result, the solo will sound different despite the notes still being the same. This can be applied to a comparison between any instrument, and with any scale or theoretical idea.
In this blog post, I want to briefly talk about how learning solos originally written on other instruments can open up a multitude of ideas that you would not have stumbled upon yourself. We will look at a brief case-study supported by a YouTube short and discuss some real world examples of guitar players who have set themselves apart because they have looked beyond their chosen discipline for inspiration.
Key Players
Allen Holdsworth
It is no secret that I am a big Allan Holdsworth fan, as are most famous guitarists that are around today, but what many people may not realize is that he originally wanted to learn the saxophone.
As I understand it, a saxophone would have been too expensive to buy when he was a child, so instead his father bought him a guitar. It was the love of saxophone heavy music, with long flowing lines only limited by one's lung capacity were in abundance. You can hear this in many of his solos and melodies. You can read about Allan a little in the blog post I featured him in here.
Myself
Including myself in this list is not an attempt to liken myself to Holdsworth, or any of the others I will mention in due time, but something I do frequently is try to imagine I am playing another instrument when I am writing melodies - it should be said, however, that sometimes you just have to let rip and make it all about the guitar!
Sometimes I imagine a piano player ascending to a certain point through a combination of triads and inversions, other times it will be phrasing in a more vocal manner. In terms of technique, copying the voice was something I did closely to achieve the correct vibrato - how deep it should be, how fast and also how it can progress.
BB King
I have lost count of how many times I have waxed lyrical about the impact BB King has had on my playing, but it is usually regarding his bending and vibrato. This time my words stem from an interview I heard a long time ago (forgive me, I can’t remember which one - I also had no luck trying to find it!).
To paraphrase his words, he said:
“I do not differentiate between singing and playing. To me they are the same thing, so when I play, I am just singing through Lucille [his guitar]”
One of the reasons that he is called the ‘King of the Blues’ is that his playing seems so natural and unforced. I believe that his prowess as a singer helped him develop that; he already knew internally how a singer would think, because he was one.
Some Examples
Make Me A Memory - Grover Washington Jr. (saxophone)
This is a popular song for jazz musicians to play and adapt in many different ways. You can see one example of this by my friend Michael O’Neill here. In his version, Michael plays the melody with some Wes Montgomery-esque octave lines.
I like this song because the melody, played on saxophone by Grover Washington Jr. originally, leaves a lot of room for one to add their own flair to it and it hits all of the notes in the right places. In the example I linked above, I did not use legato, but I tried to soften my picking to the point that the attack of each note was as close to legato as possible.
If you have a look below at the excerpt taken from the score, you will also see how this melody is not strictly boxed into each bar, starting on beat one and the notes support the chords nicely.
Here is a link to the original track.
The Diamond - Pyrates! (fiddle/violin)
This is a traditional folk song and, due to the nature of this kind of music, it is very simple. The idea is for all patrons in a venue to get singing, even if they did not know the lyrics at the start of the song. This particular version was played by Pyrates!, a Netherlands based pirate themed folk/rock band fronted by my friend, Captain David Gallows (watch out for an interview with him soon!).
In this version, the full version is linked below, the fiddle was played by Jos Koning. In my example, you can see how the notes of the melody are played very close together - the movement is restricted quite a bit. Also, there are some faster 16th notes leading into the next phrase (I have highlighted this in green in the example below. There is also a cool, descending part at the end of the melody that features two notes played in harmony - the higher of the two notes stays static where the lower note defends through the scale (highlighted red). This is called oblique motion and is often expressed across different instruments, but is conducive to the violin and similar instruments due to the way it is tuned and played.
Here is a link to the original studio version of ‘The Diamond’.
Case Study
In this part of the blog post, I want to break down a whole solo played on a Fender Rhodes, a famous electric piano synonymous with so many famous songs and genres. It originally started life in the 1940s, but became extremely popular in the 1970s with artists such as George Duke, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder and The Beatles being notable users of this fine instrument. A Rhodes piano is similar to the guitar, in that there is an internal pickup that feeds an amplifier to create the sound we know and love.
The song in question is ‘Trigonometry’ by Paul Armfield - I discussed this album in my first ‘Album Recommendations’ blog post that you can read here. When I discussed the world of songwriting with Paul, he told me that the Rhodes player on this song was Barkley McKay.
Here is a link to the original studio recording:
And here is a link to my interpretation of the Rhodes solo, played on the guitar:
If you want to learn the solo in full, then definitely check out the YouTube short I posted above.
There are three things we will look at from my interpretation of this solo. The first is that because a keyboard based instrument is orientated in a linear fashion, scales are a lot simpler to play through (no easier! Just simpler). In Fig. 1 the lick to transition from the G to C chord moves through the scale but skips over the F# note and lands perfectly on an E note in the next bar (not pictured) - E in the major third of the C chord so it fits beautifully. Many guitar players use scales in a stepwise fashion, which means if they want to go from one note to another, they play through every note of the scale to get there.
The second point I would like to discuss is the frequent use of double-stops and grace notes throughout the piece. These techniques are not uncommon to hear being utilized on the guitar, but in my experience, grace notes feed into a melody and double-stops are more of a country music sound. You also hear double-stop bends in many different kinds of music.
Using grace notes softens up the phrasing and makes it sound more human. Double stops in this context are great for breaking up melodies that use predominantly single notes at any given time. Depending on the tone you use, more than one note played in this way can give your playing a bit more grit, too! Check out the excerpt in Fig. 2.
The third and final point I want to discuss is two-fold. You will often hear guitar players stick to a certain set of subdivisions, seemingly afraid to go faster or slower. Almost like they are thinking “Ok, this is going good. Let’s not change it and make a mistake now!”. Please understand that sometimes, this is exactly what you are looking for and precisely what the song requires. There is, however, no excuse for not trying to break the mold once in a while.
In Fig. 3 you will see that I have highlighted in red a brief 32nd note section that releases some of the tension built on a bar consisting solely of 16th notes up to this point. Another way guitar players do themselves a disservice is by playing scales in one voicing or fingering. Being able to play that same scale, in permutations all over the fretboard, horizontally as well as vertically is no mean feat. Fortunately for keyboard based instruments, the shape is just repeated an octave higher, the shape is the same and so taking the scale through several octaves is not uncommon. The section I have highlighted in green is an example of this.
Please note regarding the second point made above, the note reached in the original solo is only reachable on the guitar if you have 24 frets - only my seven string guitars have 24 frets and I thought that would not be appropriate for this recording, hence the line has been moved down an octave (this has been highlighted with the blue star).
Keep an eye out on The American Guitar Academy website, because soon we will publish an interview I did with Paul Armfield where we discuss this very song.
Final Thoughts
I do not think that learning any musical idea on the guitar, but that was created for another instrument, is a particularly tricky pathway to get started on. However, the more in depth you get, the harder it becomes. You can start off easy with some of the examples that we explored today, or you could take it a step further and try longer solos - all you need is a good idea and the ability to adapt if your instrument is not physically capable of doing something (think to the 24 fret issue) - there are always ways to overcome this though!
If you are struggling with coming up with original sounding ideas, or just want to expand your possibilities, consider trying this out and seeing where it leads you. The teachers at The American Guitar Academy are the perfect choice to help you out, so get in touch!
