Beginning guitar - melody and chords

[Sherry C]

Hi friends,

My Mom is learning to play guitar, and is just starting out with some very basic single-string exercises. I'm helping her out a bit by entering her music into Notation Composer so she can hear what the song should sound like, as well as have some fingering "helps" til the notation starts to connect a bit better with her fingers for her.

With that in mind, I've done a bit of "cheating" :) In these files, the note pitch names are displayed (Format/Display pitches in noteheads). I've also added the string and fret numbers beneath the notes as lyrics. So "3-2" would mean "third string, second fret." Since they're entered as Lyrics, they can be easily displayed or hidden using the "eyeglasses" button in the Lyric palette toolbar.The following are some tunes to help the aspiring guitarist work on note reading, crossing strings, and note durations. Chord names are included so that either another guitarist can accompany the student, or the student can play the chords at will :)


Amazing Grace
653

Cockles and Mussels
654

Melancholy
655

Psalm 100
656

Tenting Tonight
657

When the Saints Go Marching In
658


Enjoy!
Sherry

[Sherry C]

Hi,

I'm confused on why the first note in "Melancholy" is written as a quarter note and sounds like one but takes up the whole first measure like a whole note. It doesn't seem to last 3 beats.

The first measure is what's called a "pickup measure". You'll also notice that the last measure is only two beats, and is called a trailing measure. The first one-beat measure plus the last two-beat measure together make up a full three-beat measure.


Some of the other phrasing in the song is not how I'd write it either, example being the starting of a passage as the last note of a bar but I've never heard this song so maybe that's the common way of writing it. It could be possible that I'm hearing the song with a different "ear" than intended. Who knows?

Since I'm not the composer of this piece, I can't answer for the philosophical "why", but from a musical perspective, the phrasing is a sort of repeat of that opening pickup measure - pickups (and their corresponding phrasing) give a piece a different "groove" or feel to a piece, because the "pulse" of a measure typically emphasizes beat one. If that "pulse" beat falls on part of the phrase other than the first note, it does feel different than a "straight" measure. Sometimes those kinds of phrasing changes are used within a composition to lend a different feel to a chorus as opposed to the verse (or vice versa). We have a modernization of a hymn that we sing at church which uses this device quite effectively, and makes the chorus feel that it's moving at a different pace than the verse, as well as lends emphasis to certain words in the lyric that otherwise would fall on "lesser" beats.

Some others who have actual compositional training may be able to elaborate better than myself :)

ttfn,
Sherry