The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #79068   Message #1429860
Posted By: M.Ted
08-Mar-05 - 01:34 PM
Thread Name: Adding Variety To Three Chord Songs
Subject: RE: Adding Variety To Three Chord Songs
Here is an idea that will give you a bit of perspective on your question:

Classical musicians play composed pieces--everything is written out on the page, and all they need to do is learn how to play it--as a "non-classical" guitarist, you're problem is that all you have written on the page are some chord names--all the rest you have to provide yourself--you are either or both the composer and arranger--

Music is really made up of strings ideas--melodic ideas, rhythmic ideas, and harmonic ideas--some of the ideas are original, but most are used over and over by everyone--they are like the words in a sentence, and the sentences in a paragraph--it isn't the indvidual parts that is your creation, it's what they add up to--

What you're really saying is that you want each song that you play to be a unique creation--and what you really want to know is, what are some of the different ideas that you can use?


This question is a lot easier to answer if people know what kind of music you are playing--for instance, in jazz, you can often use lots of chord substitutions--in Blues and certain kinds of Rock, you can work with repetitive bass lines--in other kinds of rock, and certain types of folk, you can play rhythmic solos within the basic chord progression, in other kinds of folk, you can add melodic phrases played out of floating chord positions--sometimes, you can even use all of this stuff, but it is usually best to keep things fairly simple and clean--(In fact, there are some kinds of music where it isn't good to add variety)--

So, before we go any further, what sort of music are you playing?