Writing Sheet Music

Hey there! :)

So.. I'm at a point where I want to write out some of the music I have been composing. I could just use tablature since the majority of the parts could simply be played on guitar and bass.. but I wanted to be able to write for my church band. There are two band structures I need to deal with:

Small Regular Band:
Piano
Guitar
Female Singer
Male Singer
Congo Drum (not all the time.. and he usually just makes it up as he goes along)

Bigger Band:
Keyboard
Guitar 1
Guitar 2
Bass
Drum (full kit)
Female Singer (sometimes 2)
Male Singer (usually only 1)
(Occasionally there will be another instrument.. such as a flute or a saxophone but this is an exception to the rule. The extra instrument situation occurs even less frequently than the Congo drums situation from above)

I've been reading Music Theory books, including how to write sheet music but I am a little overwhelmed still with what I need to do. I want to be able to compose almost everything on the guitar if I can, and use the keyboard as little as possible. I can easily create the key, tempo, and time signatures. Create chord progressions, melodies, bass lines, counterpoint and harmony melodies all on the guitar.. but the bit I am having trouble getting my head around is where to begin writing out the sheet music.

I don't even know where on my guitar is the middle pitch. I'm assuming that I need to treat the guitar in a similar way to the piano. The piano has the middle C which you can see below right in the middle of the treble-clef and the bass-cleff. This makes it extremely easy to know where to begin writing down the notes on the staff. Now this book I have says that guitars are an octave lower (or higher.. I can't remember off the top of my head right this second) than concert pitch.. but where on the guitar do I start and finish on the staff.

If I play a middle C on the piano, then I play that "pitch" on the guitar.. I can play it in at least 2 different places, which makes it even more confusing and frustrating. Is there some way, like the circle of 5ths, to immediately know which particular "pitch" fits into which particular position on the staff?

I think that is the key point of it all, is that I need to think about it in "pitch" rather than notes of a particular octave. I can play a note of a particular octave at least 2 places on the guitar (except for the low and high end parts of the guitar's vocal range).. so I need to know the pitch rather than the note, and how that fits in with the concert pitch. I feel I am very close to understanding this, so may be I just need someone to say it all again in a different way with some examples on the guitar.

Hello,

Regarding pitch for staff, we usually see 8va for guitar, meaning to play the notes an octave up. The low C on your guitar is middle C if you write 8va on the score. Otherwise we would have a whole pile of extra ledger lines to deal with.

Good luck,

Sarinaj :)

The lowest C is played either on 3rd fret on A-string or 9th fret on bottom-E string, correct? And the highest C is the 21st fret on the top-E string, correct?

Middle C is the 3 fret of the A string, and the highest C you could play at concert pitch would be at the 20th fret of the high E.

Hey Light, I've written a fair few pieces for multiple instruments none of which are guitar. I can sight read music from learning the piano years back but the way I actually 'write' is in midi - it's so much easier. Eg open up Cubase or Reaper etc and click on a midi part, you will see a keyboard on the left side of the screen. From there, all you have to do is set the quantize parameters to the smallest note length - eg 16's and the time signature. You can then drop in the notes into the grid very easily and they sound out as you do so, stretch the note to the desired length, semi-quaver, triplet whatever. If you want to switch to standard notation you can do so by switching the view menu and you will get sheet music, which you can also edit easily. I still compose on the guitar but when inputting things into midi by ear you can get some refreshing new ideas because of the different medium. Makes things very handy!

Well, if you're up for cheating - powertab will sort it all for you. You can tab out whatever melody, and it'll write the score for you.

Originally Posted by: renMiddle C is the 3 fret of the A string

Is that right? I'm just learning standard notation on the guitar so I'm not sure. But I think that middle C is actually the first fret of the B string. But guitar notation is written an octave higher as sarinaj said. So when you see a middle C in guitar notation, it's played an octave lower, like the 3rd fret of the A string.