A musical project for Lent

I realize it’s jumping the gun to start thinking about Lent before Mardi Gras passes. With that out of the way...

To help myself accomplish a musical goal I’ve set, I’m announcing it here: by Good Friday, I will post a decent recording of O Sacred Head Surrounded on guitar.

To accomplish this goal, I started with music and guitar chords in Ritual Song, and created this tablature, designed to play most of the melody notes off the chords. Creating the tablature was fun, but for someone like me, without a musical education, it was a challenge. Fortunately I had a cheat sheet. Creating the tablature was a matter of finding the spots for each note of the melody (there were usually at least two practical choices), locating the spots where the notes in the accompanying chord could be played, and finding a combination that I could realistically learn to play.

Another consideration: My guitar teacher, Vincent, has been preaching voice-leading to me. In practical terms, that means reducing the amount of work it takes to move from one chord to the next. In musical terms, it means that some element or elements from one chord carry forward to the next. For example, an F-major chord contains the notes F, A, and C. The A-minor chord contains the notes A, C, and E. If you invert one chord or the other, you’ll see that they’re only one note apart: change the F in F-major to an E, and you have an A-minor. Which means that, if you’re plucking three strings to produce an F-major, you need to move just one finger by just one fret to change the F-major to an A-minor. So in creating the tablature, I looked for stuff like that. The idea was to analyze each chord, figure out what notes it has in common with the preceding and following chords, and see whether I could minimize the effort in moving from one chord to the next.

Anyway, that’s what I tried to do in coming up with created the tablature. If you play guitar, do me a favor: download it, give it a whirl, and let me know how it might be improved.

Comments

[Patty Sommer]

Love this idea! I really prefer the idea of doing something positive for Lent, rather than "giving something up," which never seems to work for me. So, you have inspired me. By Easter, I will have mastered Schubert's Ave Maria, Scott Joplin's Solace, and the Italian folk song Santa Lucia to the point where I can play them in a recital at my Easter brunch. Thanks!

[Renaissance Clothing]

Mee too, I agree with this idea. I prefer doing musical project for lent rather than doing things that are not worth doing for.