The Guitar
A Modular Approach to Guitar
Many music therapists approach the guitar with the collection of chord shapes and simplistic strumming patterns hastily learned on practicum. They had not had the opportunity to progress beyond this rudimentary approach. The One-Tune-Medley is a complex task that requires broad instrumental skills. Before embarking on the One-Tune-Medley, participants learned a battery of modular guitar techniques. Malleably Musical supported participants as they learned how to navigate the notes so they could articulate a variety of voicings and intentionally create specific effects. The following section is an overview of the Modular Guitar Technique, see Appendix 4 for further detail.
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’ as featured in the playlists 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 with accompanying fingering diagrams were included above 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 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.
