I'm going to ask an important but dumbass question that probably comes up for a lot of people. I think there's an obvious answer, but I'm hoping for another one. :)
I often want to use a guitar, but I don't know how to play. I'll try to lay out a chord progression by making a sequence of notes and then making chords out of them. (I usually find that a chord's sound is most influenced by its top note, so I'll lay those out and then sketch out major/minor triads by going down from there. This isn't strictly in line with theory, which would indicate that a chord's sound should come from its root, but it seems to work a lot of the time.)
Piano triads will usually follow the sound of the note I chose. Guitar chords, involving more notes arranged differently than 3 consecutive keys on the keyboard, are a whole different matter. A straight conversion from piano triad to guitar chord based on the name of the chord alone will sometimes screw up the shape of the chord progression's melody completely--a spot that used to be higher in pitch can suddenly come out lower when made into a guitar chord, or vice versa.
One solution to this would be to ignore the nature of the guitar and just use piano triads. But I'd prefer to respect the nature of the instrument and at least try to sequence MIDI for it in a way that could actually be played. (I've done a lot of work to try to achieve this, including creating spreadsheets to calculate which MIDI note falls where on the fretboard, and eventually working with Guitar Pro.) Guitar Pro helps with this. But that doesn't solve the basic problem of the changes in the melody's shape. So far, the only solution I've come up with is to guess at alternative fingerings/inversions in Guitar Pro and hope to get back to the sound I was trying for.
The obvious solution is to learn to play guitar and write chords with that vocabulary of sounds available. But, without meaning disrespect to any guitarists out there, learning a new instrument is more work than I'd like to do orz.
Is there another, better way to do this?
I often want to use a guitar, but I don't know how to play. I'll try to lay out a chord progression by making a sequence of notes and then making chords out of them. (I usually find that a chord's sound is most influenced by its top note, so I'll lay those out and then sketch out major/minor triads by going down from there. This isn't strictly in line with theory, which would indicate that a chord's sound should come from its root, but it seems to work a lot of the time.)
Piano triads will usually follow the sound of the note I chose. Guitar chords, involving more notes arranged differently than 3 consecutive keys on the keyboard, are a whole different matter. A straight conversion from piano triad to guitar chord based on the name of the chord alone will sometimes screw up the shape of the chord progression's melody completely--a spot that used to be higher in pitch can suddenly come out lower when made into a guitar chord, or vice versa.
One solution to this would be to ignore the nature of the guitar and just use piano triads. But I'd prefer to respect the nature of the instrument and at least try to sequence MIDI for it in a way that could actually be played. (I've done a lot of work to try to achieve this, including creating spreadsheets to calculate which MIDI note falls where on the fretboard, and eventually working with Guitar Pro.) Guitar Pro helps with this. But that doesn't solve the basic problem of the changes in the melody's shape. So far, the only solution I've come up with is to guess at alternative fingerings/inversions in Guitar Pro and hope to get back to the sound I was trying for.
The obvious solution is to learn to play guitar and write chords with that vocabulary of sounds available. But, without meaning disrespect to any guitarists out there, learning a new instrument is more work than I'd like to do orz.
Is there another, better way to do this?
