The Guitar
Creating dynamic accompaniment with the guitar
This lead sheet is a guitar reduction of the accompaniment to Joe Cocker’s (1969) rendition of Lennon and MacCartney’s ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ (1967) as featured in the playlist in Pillar 2.
I interpreted the band in this way to demonstrate the guitar’s capacity to create a vibrant accompaniment featuring a variety of textures, voicings, and dynamics using typical chord shapes familiar to most guitarists. The guitar reduction incorporated elements of the full band arrangement including organs, drums, backing vocals, and bass guitar to create an impression of this seminal recording.
Chord symbols
The accompanying fingering diagrams were included above the voiced chords on the stave. The score spelled out an accompaniment using these chord shapes, creating a dynamic texture by varying how many strings were strummed at any one time to vary the density of the chord.
The proximity of the chord diagrams with the score illustrated how texturally dynamic accompaniment can be created by exploiting note placement within chord shapes. This approach demonstrated an incremental entry point to dynamic accompaniment beyond the more rudimentary approach of strumming all strings at all times.
Other key textural effects include playing only a bass line to create a sense of momentum, periods of tacet to highlight the dramatic nature of the vocal line, and voice leading to illustrate the capacity for guitar to feature horizontal melody within the harmonic accompaniment.
