In today's online classical guitar lessons, Craig Winston gives advice on playing and differentiating multiple voices in a classical guitar arrangement.
As you advance in your classical guitar skills, your repertoire will inevitably be populated by more and more voices or lines of music. Or more succinctly, more notes played at the same time. In a previous lesson, we talked about reading this type of polyphony in a guitar score. Today we’ll think about various ways to make the different parts sound like different parts.
Firstly, let’s define what those parts are. We’ll think about a four voice choir: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass (SATB). This is a four part texture, but we can imagine various other configurations with fewer or great numbers of voices.
Classical Guitar -what are voices
Generally, the Soprano (the highest voice) will get the melody. The two inner voices, Alto and Tenor, will support the melody and fill out the harmony, or they may reinforce a bass part in similar ways. The bass, of course, is the lowest voice, acting to define the harmony and the pulse of the music.
- Soprano - Melody
- Alto - upper accompaniment
- Tenor - lower accompaniment
- Bass - bass line/overall pulse
It’s important to be able to see the different parts within a piece of music, to be able to separate them and play them in isolation. Our next lesson will focus on this task. For basic concepts review the article on reading note durations within the score.
Classical Guitarist's toolbox
The way you convey the different parts will be style dependent, as some more modern styles might require a rhythmic inner accompaniment vs. gratuitous legato in the melody. For now, though, let’s assume we’ll play with legato applied to all parts.
Rhythm, Duration and Legato
Importantly, many of the parts will note have the exact same rhythm or placement within the score. For example a melody might sound at the same time as the bass, but the accompaniment may sound on the following upbeat. This works in your favor: so long as you honor the legato and the duration of the notes, it will be clear that several different voices are happening. Contrastingly, if you don’t honor the legato or the duration of notes, the sum of all the parts may sound like an accompaniment that is lacking a melody, or even lacking someone to sing lyrics over it.
Volume, and placement
Once you can be sure lines aren’t rhythmically interfering with the others, you’ll want to place the voices in the mix. Firstly, the melody should sing above all of the other voices. Give it a sweet tone and enough volume and clarity to draw the listeners attention. The bass line should also be prominent, though ceding some space for the melody; let the bass be clear enough that we hear the beat when it plays. The accompaniment should then sit in the middle, often a reduction in volume can be enough to differentiate it from the bass or melody.
Connection and flow
The notes of any given line should sound like they belong together. For example, melody notes should flow together without overly dramatic differences in volume, and the legato should connect them. Finally, as the notes sustain over the other parts, it will be clear that movement in the inner voices does not belong to the melody. The accompaniment may like a slightly more monotonous approach to its volume, staying pretty stable according to the overall dynamic; too much expressivity in the inner voices can draw too much attention to this support part. Finally, the bass line, as it will often sound less frequently, will adjust to support the dynamic of the moment without drawing attention from the melody.
Timbre
Lastly, and this is a more advanced consideration, tone color can greatly differentiate the different parts. Consider that different fingers offer different sounds (namely thumb). Ensuring bass lines and sometimes tenor voices and played with the thumb will invariably set those notes apart from the rest. Using the flesh of the thumb vs its nail will also help to color notes further in the case that you want to clarify bass vs. tenor. The placement of your picking hand, towards the bridge or towards the neck will also provide color changes. a very meticulous performance might implement all of these approaches to give each voice its own color, though such detail is beyond many advanced players. Also, your choice of string will affect a notes tone, thereby allowing it to belong to one voice vs. another, for example and open string high E can have an uncomfortably bright tone, but a fretted E on the second or third string gives a warmer sound.
In sum
To summarize these are the key elements you can use to create clarity between your voices on the guitar:
- clarity of rhythm and duration
- legato and sustain
- volume and subtle shaping within phrases
- tonal color based on finger choice, string choice, or placement of the pluck along a string.
- As an added bonus, giving vibrato to a melody note can further draw our attention.
Keep in mind that “melody” doesn’t always occur in the upper voice, so in those cases you’ll need to shape whichever range (SATB) accordingly.
Craig Winston is a classical guitarist and teacher in Denver, CO. He holds a Master of Music degree in Classical Guitar Performance from Lamont School of Music. As a performer he has given concerts in Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and New England with regular classical guitar concerts in the Denver area and Santa Fe, NM.