In today's online guitar lessons, we'll discuss the importance of note durations and how to interpret them as different voices in a classical guitar score. This lesson assumes you can read music and studying music arranged for finger style guitar.
The Guitar has Many Voices - understanding polyphony
Guitar is a polyphonic instrument, meaning it can play many notes at once. If we think of a single singer, that singer is monophonic because they can only possibly sing one note at a time. However, if we group them with other singers into a choir, we’d say that the choir is polyphonic because, with many singers, it has the ability to produce many notes at once. Similarly, if the guitar had only one string, it would be monophonic, but we have many strings on our instrument, and thusly can produce many voices. The root of the word “poly” means “many,” and the suffix “phonic” means sounds.
In popular music, we most often hear guitar polyphony in strummed chords, and we usually hear all the notes changing at the same time; so while we hear polyphony we don’t often think of this type of playing as such; as players we simply consider the chord shape as “the note” we’re playing in that moment that then moves on to the next. Sometimes, however, a player will arpeggiate chords in a rhythm pattern, letting notes ring against each other, for example in songs like “Blackbird” or “Never Going Back.” In Flamenco, Jazz and some much more technical blues, rock, and folk music, a player might perform a bass line, accompaniment, and melody. This type of playing is polyphonic as we similarly find in most of the repertoire for classical guitar.
Guitar notation - quick overview
Our notation system has gone through many evolutions. Fernando Sor, in fact, once published a score for guitar on two staves, using 3 different clefs to precisely encapsulate the guitar’s range. Today we simply use the treble clef, though our instrument sounds on octave lower than written. And in modern times, common practice is to write on a single staff for simplicity. Thus, a guitar score, despite being written on a single staff, is giving us a huge amount of information then. We’re given pitch, rhythm, and durations of many simultaneously occurring sounds. As such, we must be aware and honor the indications in the score.
Technical Challenges of Solo Guitar Arrangements
This presents some technical challenges. For most of us the concern of sustaining notes underneath or above other moving voices is the major issue. We should make every effort to hold down a sustained note until the last possible moment. With practice and awareness these instances will become easier. And similarly, we should take care to honor rests in the score as they might occur in one voice vs. another; we can do this by muting the necessary strings to stop the sound.
There is also the concern of efficiency in the left hand. Guitar is a very shape oriented instrument, and we can often be tempted to hold down a chord shape, even if the notes are no longer needed or not yet required. In this case, we should think in a linear fashion, rather than vertically. Vertical thinking asks us to stack up all the notes we will need in a measure or figure. Linear thinking asks us to place our fingers on the notes as they occur in time. This requires developing finger independence, and even for advanced players is an ongoing point of improvement.
Here are a few tips to help you understand the note durations in the score:
- The different “voices” will be given different stem directions.
- Different voices will also likely have different durations, for example the bass might have a whole note starting on beat 1, while the treble has an array of eighth notes that begin later in the measure.
- Notes that have stems (halves, quarters, eights, etc.) can be given two stems and beamed together with notes of shorter duration. This is a placeholder device to make it easier to interpret the rhythm. An example would be that the bass line’s quarter notes all occur on down beats and are stemmed in both directions with an array of melody notes above that only occur on up beats.
- Rests might be included to act as place holders if one of the voices hasn’t occurred yet or if it drops out mid measure.
- Notes will generally align for their placement in time. Remember, music is a graph: changes in pitch over change in time. But if it is not immediately clear, add up the durations in a voice for the measure in question, do they add up to the full measure?
- A piece will have a melody and a bass line. Some more complex pieces will have a texture that includes accompaniment in a middle voice or voices. Even still, some music might have interplay between the voices, as in music by Bach, where there isn’t necessarily melody vs. accompaniment so much as various melodies occurring in different ranges.
- Sage advice: look at the score and see if you can tell which notes belong to one voice vs. another. It can be helpful to highlight them at first just to differentiate for yourself. Once you’ve identified the voices, clap the rhythm of the top voice while counting aloud, then do the same for any other occurring voices. Next, play the uppermost voice on the guitar. Do you have the rhythm correct? Play it a few times to hear it separate from the full arrangement. Then do the same for each other voice. It can be helpful to sing the lines as well, away from the guitar, and also while playing the rest of the arrangement on the guitar.
- As you play the lines independently, be sure to mind finger indications in the score, and also finger independence. This will aid in your playing the full arrangement later.
- Finally, as you play each individual line, does the way you play it sound convincing as a single voice? Do all of your notes have the same tone, color, clarity, legato? Do you happen to accent some notes vs. others? This final step of listening is crucial to developing the illusion of multiple instruments performing at once. We all remember when we first heard an amazing classical guitar performance and shook our heads in disbelief that it was performed by a single person on a single instrument.
Craig Winston is a classical guitarist and teacher in Denver Colorado. He holds a Master of Music Degree in Classical Guitar Performance and has performed throughout the United States as a solo artist and with various bands and ensembles. For more information click here.