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Resource Explaining guitar for non-guitarists (rock, metal, acoustic)

uncreepy

👵Escaped from the retirement home
Apr 9, 2018
1,618
1) GUITAR 101


1a) Introduction

Hi, everyone. I thought it would be helpful to provide breakdowns of memorable guitar parts from famous songs in order to help teach non-guitarists how to "think" like a guitarist. I noticed a lot of creators are interested in making rock or metal songs, but are struggling to make their guitar sound like, well, a real guitar played by an actual guitarist and not just a cheesy MIDI.

I will gradually be adding songs to this thread ranging from rock, to metal, to acoustic songs. Feel free to request specific songs and specific sections of the song, because I think I will only be breaking down about 8-12 bars per song.

The breakdowns will include explanations of how a guitar works, genre-specific techniques, genre/role-specific tones (as in guitar pedals/drop tuning), highlighting riffs, and showing how it all fits in with other instruments in the song.


1b) A bit of info about real guitars
Guitars generally have 6 strings and are electric (plug into an amp) or acoustic. The thickest and thinnest string are sometimes in the same tuning. The thickest string is the most important, it usually indicates the "tuning" your guitar. For example, "Standard" tuning actually means "E Standard", referring to the low E string.

Standard tuning means the strings are tuned to E A D G B E:
standard.jpg
^ Notice that string #1 is the thinnest string and string #6 is the thickest string illustrated by a gradually thickening horizontal line.

maxresdefault1.jpg
^ However, be aware that real guitars have the thickest string on top.

You can expect that acoustic guitars will mostly be in standard tuning. However, electric guitars have a much wider range of tuning and you can expect them to be "drop tuned". In the above image, the octave is indicated in addition to the letter name. Pay attention to this, as the octave tends to drop for rock and even more for metal.

Note #1: You can expect that for acoustic guitars, players like to go the opposite route and use a capo to shorten their strings and raise the octaves (compared to metal dropping their range as low as possible).

Note #2: Guitars can actually have more than 6 strings. Some metal guitarists can have 7 or 8 strings (or even pay to have a custom guitar with more strings), this lets them have high notes for special parts in the song while being able to chug on the very low tuned strings.


1c) Drop tuning
Not only do alternate tunings make it so that certain chords are easier for guitarists to play (such as power chords), but they also allow the player to drop their octaves and give the guitar an intimidating low sound. Other common tunings that gradually get lower-sounding are Drop D, Drop C, Drop B, and many more in between.

7.jpg
^ Example of a 7 string guitar in Drop D tuning.


1d) You will probably need more than 1 guitar
In real bands, you will almost always have at least 2 guitarists.
1) Lead guitar: The lead guitarist is the guitar hero who plays an iconic riff or does the sick shredding solos.
2) Rhythm guitar: This person usually plays chords for the entire song. While they are not as iconic as the lead guitar, they are arguably more important. Chords play throughout the entire song and they do a strumming pattern to keep the beat. The way they play the chords-- how fast, if they hit every 1 2 3 4 beat or not, if they use upstrokes or downstrokes-- can completely change the feeling and genre of a song.

It will be your duty to make one track for the chords/rhythm guitar and one for the flamboyant solos/riffs. Separating these two roles is very important in composing the parts of your song. It will also help when you get to the step of assigning an amp tone to each of them that fits their role and doesn't overpower the song.

Note: For an acoustic song, you might only need one rhythm guitar. Imagine a man playing guitar by a campfire. The minimum amount he can do is simply strum and sing. Of course, his playing style can become more complex by adding techniques like tapping on the guitar, playing fingerstyle arpeggios, or mixing in a melody for improv.


2. THE UNIQUE SOUND OF A GUITAR


2a) Tone (not just important for guitarists)

Tone is a very important word for guitarists. When an idolized guitarist has their own signature tone, people really envy it and wonder how they got their sound. It is a combination of their playing skills, technique, but most relevant for non-guitarists: it is also a combination of their amp and guitar pedals. You won't have to learn lightning fast shredding skills, you will just have to be aware of guitar roles (lead usually needs a "clean" effect) vs rhythm (could be anything ranging from distortion to fuzz depending on genre) and how to use virtual amps/pedals.


^ Lead guitar: Different types of tones for various genres.


^ Examples of using the incorrect tone for your genre


2b) Guitar pedals customize tone
Some DAWs let you use a virtual pedal board/virtual stomps that can be arranged in different orders to achieve the desired effect.

stomps.jpg
^ Image of a VST with pedals you can turn on/off, change dial settings, and rearrange.


^ Video of real pedals being demonstrated to show their sounds.


^ Some genres really rely on special pedals, such as ambient. There are many tutorials on YouTube of people demonstrating how they chain their pedals, so go ahead and research your target genre.
 
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uncreepy

👵Escaped from the retirement home
Apr 9, 2018
1,618
3. MAKING A SONG


3a) What is a riff?
Riffs are essential to any rock or metal song. They are possibly more iconic than the singing itself and people can recognize the song just by hearing a few seconds of it.


^ Even a non-guitarist will tap their foot to these iconic riffs.


^ This is a video by a gypsy jazz violinist, but it is probably the most helpful demonstration for coming up with a riff that I have seen to date. He compares riffs to a melody in a way anyone can understand. Melodies (imagine it being sung by an iconic singer with a huge range like Whitney Houston) have a larger range than riffs. Riffs are "micro-melodies" with a smaller range and are more repetitive and get sung over.


3b) Strumming defines your genre
Acoustic songs will benefit the most from varied strumming patterns.
Metal and rock usually mainly focus on downstrokes, because they are more powerful-sounding. Gypsy jazz sometimes features exclusively upstrokes. Folk songs and pop songs use a wide variety of strumming patterns.

The point of a strumming pattern is to decide what to emphasize through silence (such as a chime being hit during the silence) and to help emphasize the beat people tap their foot to.

strum.jpg
^ Black arrows represent powerful downstrokes. Red up arrows represent upstrokes, which change the feeling of a chord because it plays the notes backwards. The way each pattern is counted is 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +, with 1 2 3 4 being the main beat and the +(and)'s giving a syncopated feeling or make the song seem faster by filling in the silence.


^ I know the ukulele is the arc nemesis of guitar, but this video has the quickest demonstration of many (32!) strumming patterns along with diagrams, no frivolous talking interrupting your listening experience.

In a DAW, you can either get a guitar VST that has pick modeling (as in you tell it which direction the pick is going-- up or down, but they are expensive), or stagger the notes in the chord by a tiny bit + lower the velocity for the last few notes hit in the chord to try to emulate this for a subtle realistic effect.


3c) Special techniques
There are many techniques that guitarists use for their songs, but are difficult to replicate in a DAW without expensive VSTs. Be aware of these techniques so you can either 1) purchase VSTs that have more realistic sounds or 2) know what sounds you are missing out on so you don't waste time trying to achieve a sound impossible for your current sound library.

Tapping:

^ Instead of striking a string with a pick, the guitarist uses their fingers to aggressively poke the fretboard to make a sound play.

Slide guitar:

^ The guitarist wears a slide (made of glass, ceramic, or metal) in order to make a barre across the fretboard and produce this iconic country-music sound.

Whammy (tremolo) bar tricks + extras like pinch harmonics:

^ The whammy bar basically lets you do extreme vibrato quickly for things like "dive bombs".

There are many other techniques, these are just a few examples!
 
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uncreepy

👵Escaped from the retirement home
Apr 9, 2018
1,618
Okay, now it is finally time for the first breakdown "lesson" in the thread!

"The Red" - Chevelle

^ The following segment is from the first 20 seconds of this


DAW visual:

^ Please download this in order to view it better.


Sheet music:


Tempo:
The tempo is 73 bpm. In general, guitarists tend to play shorter notes (like 16th notes) when the tempo is slower.


Palm muting:
I've noticed that for some rock/metal songs, the guitarist deadens the sound coming from the strings when the singing starts (it's called "palm muting" and is indicated in sheet music as "P.M." (See bar 5 in the sheet music above.)


^ Timestamped, he played some open strings and then at 0:27 he played the muted sound.

This technique is extremely popular in the metal djent genre for an almost percussive effect


Note about slides:
In the singing part of this song (which I'm using guitar notation for), when he sings "fre-ak" and "o-ut", it slides from C#5 to D#5.

^ Timestamped for the slide from one note to the next. This is a very common technique for guitar, but it also sounds extremely emotive and beautiful for singing. It would be good to consider using these bends in pitch for both guitar and Vocaloid singing (by breaking a word into at least 2 notes).
 
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uncreepy

👵Escaped from the retirement home
Apr 9, 2018
1,618
I finally got the breakdown for "The Red" uploaded. Can you all please let me know if it makes sense (in terms of visuals) or if anything needs to be explained better?

I'm going to talk about a song by Breaking Benjamin, Evanescence, and Within Temptation song in the future. Feel free to request anything else.
 
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uncreepy

👵Escaped from the retirement home
Apr 9, 2018
1,618
I remembered I have a cheat sheet of guitar tunings (probably not relevant to most people in this thread), key, scale degrees, and chords used in songs by various artists.

(There's a Starset song on there that I couldn't find the chords to, though.) I will probably update this as I study more songs and post a new version, but I might as well post this now since I have it handy.

(You can probably get an idea of the kind of English-language music I like based on this list, haha... 👀)

 
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uncreepy

👵Escaped from the retirement home
Apr 9, 2018
1,618
Here is a folder with a .wav of each separate instrument part for "The Red". I didn't cut out the silence in case someone wants to combine them all in Audacity (or a DAW) in order to try turning off each track in different combinations to study it:

Rhythm guitar:


Electric bass:


Vocal:


Drumkit:
 

uncreepy

👵Escaped from the retirement home
Apr 9, 2018
1,618
I'm slowly chipping away at this one. Will just upload lesson parts as I make them.

"Breath" - Breaking Benjamin

This breakdown coincides with 1:00 ~ 1:26.


I have the entire 1st page of the PDF blank so it was easier for me to keep the timing of the bars correctly. Just pay attention to the rest of the pages. There are a lot more instruments compared to "The Red" in the previous song breakdown.


In the sheet music, the drums have parts where they are hit harder than normal indicated by little v's and ^'s.
drum.png

The X's in the guitar parts means the sound is muted for a chug sound.
mute.png


(As a note, I know I'm crud at mixing and the instrument preset sounds pale in comparison to the real band's sound, so uh, don't judge me too harshly.)
Folder with all audio tracks

Combined:


1. Clean Guitar (this only plays for 2 bars, 8 and 9 at 0:18 ~ 0:23)


2. Rhythm guitar 1


3. Rhythm guitar 2 (rhythm guitar 1 and 2 are the same as each other from 24 ~ 30, then are different 31 ~ 33)


4. Electric bass


5. Vocal


6. Drumkit
 

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