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Transform your guitar composition skills with these 7 steps

This doc is for guitar players and aspiring composers and songwriters who want to fully express themselves and become well-rounded musicians.

I hope it’ll help you unleash your inner artist and enhance your guitar composition skills in 2023 and beyond!

Before getting into it, know that if you need help implementing the following steps to transform your guitar playing, musicianship, composition skills and more - you can have a chat with me 🙂.

The chat is for you to see how to put all of these pieces together and take your guitar playing and your composition skills to the next level.

Book a call in the link below to explore how the following creative process can work for you:

https://calendly.com/udiglaser/guitar-chat⁠

(this is a direct link to my calendar)

Here’s a 7-step overview for creating and completing meaningful music and transforming your guitar composition skills along that journey:

Step #1

Adopt a creative mindset by practising exercises that can enhance your divergent thinking (finding many solutions to the same problem) and originality.

For example, here’s my 5-a-day exercise: Choose a few notes - like C, D, and E - and find five different ways to play them each day.

Step #2

Invite the muses and create musical seeds that will serve as the basis for your music pieces. Focus mainly on coming up with meaningful and short melodies, as they are more open to interpretation.

For example, use your voice to sing a melody and then find it on the guitar, which also helps with mastering the fretboard and developing aural skills. Here’s a simple and short melody:

Melody: E-D-C, E-D-B.

Step #3

Extend those musical seeds and turn them into more substantial melodies by using improvisation flow and other practical tools.

For example, the melody from step #2 can be extended by using repetitions and sequences:

Extended Melody: E-D-C, C-D-E, F-E-D, D-E-F, E-D-C, E-D-B

Step #4

Move the melody to the high pitch strings, so you can add harmony and rhythm to the other strings to enrich it. Applying the fingerstyle approach is very effective here, as it’s a great opportunity to be creative with your finger-picking.

For example,

Added Harmony: | F | Am | G | Dm | | Am | G | G |

Step #5

Develop the first idea by adding more parts, if the music needs it, by applying music theory concepts and analysing your ideal songs.

For example, a contrasting B-part with a different melody, harmony, rhythm, and feel.

B-Part Harmony: | F | F | Em | G | B-Part Melody: B-C-A, B-C-B, B-C-G

Step #6

Arrange all parts into a finalised form, record a demo, and share it with people you value for their taste, opinion and professionalism.

For example, if it’s right for your music, arrange it as a chord melody and use a simple A-B-A form.

Step #7

Finilise the music by:

tweaking it based on the feedback you received. For example, if it sounds too similar to existing music, change the chords.

embellishing it with all available elements of music and guitar expression tools, such as dynamics, timbre, and ornamentation. This is both for the overall flow of the music, like choosing contrasting dynamics for each part, and also for the little details, such as adding an appoggiatura to the melody.

Then professionally record, mix, master and share it with the world 🙂👍

Need more guidance?

You can apply all of the above by taking the long black road alone or you can choose the more fun, thorough and fast track with my new academy: The Art of Guitar Composition.

Current students already take their guitar composition skills to the next level and participate in an inspiring and supportive community.

Join us and let me personally guide you over the next year to make sure you connect and unleash your inner artist and express yourself fully without fail.

BOOK YOUR GUITAR CHAT WITH ME TODAY 🎸💬 👇