As you might or might not know, I play the guitar. By play, I would say I find chords and tabs online and then just follow them to learn the song. That approach has allowed me to learn some songs to play but hasn’t really helped me understand what I’m playing. So I thought the natural next step would be to take what I learnt from Ableton and apply it to the guitar.
One of the biggest things I learnt was how moving down each fret on the guitar is also like moving down one key on the piano. Also, the middle of the string is an entire octave higher than the open string note. From physics, this makes sense as the higher octave is twice the frequency and a string that is half the length will oscillate at twice the frequency.
I also spent a good bit of time learning the different types of chords. There are three main types; open chords, bar chords and power chords. Bar chords and power chords have the benefit of having the same chord shape making it easier to switch between the different chords. Open chords, while they are more difficult to learn, provide a fuller sound so are often preferred. In the end it depends on the sound you are trying to create.
Once I learnt the chords, it was much easier to start picking some melodies on the guitar as all the strings are in the scale. This meant whatever pattern I plucked, it (mostly) sound good. My lead guitar work still needs some skill before I share some clips but here’s a short clip of my playing the rhythm guitar for a very popular song. Let me know in the comments below if you can guess it.