The first major benefit is that composition really helps you to understand the enormous importance of rhythm in music. You are required to place all of your notes carefully in relation to the pulse and once you know exactly where they fall you will notice the confidence that it brings to your playing. No one can ever say that they truly know a piece until they have really analyzed it and fully understood where each note falls.
It follows from this, that by thinking along these lines you will think differently about improvisation. There will be more focus on rhythmic accuracy and a tendency to make things much less complicated than they need to be. A habit I often see in students when they start to do this, is to try and launch into improvisations with all guns blazing right from the start, without too much thought for crafting a solo carefully.
The danger of this is that inevitably they run out of steam and their playing can have a tendency to sound a little disjointed. Simply start with one note at a time so that you can get comfortable with the chord progression underneath. By leaving the space the ideas will begin to formulate in your head and you can start to put them into play by gradually adding one or two notes at a time. Liken it to laying down a solid foundation and then gradually build upon it.
By crafting your solos through composing you will learn not to push every piece of your knowledge into any available space. Instead you will learn to consider what is more appropriate, how to gradually build a solo in terms of intensity, and how to create balanced musical phrases. The good use of appropriates phrasal techniques such as staccato or accents, as well as dynamics and sounds will come into play and it is precisely these that separate a good musician from an average one.
Another benefit of immense importance that is part and parcel of composition is the ear training that comes with it. You will find yourself really listening in to other songs for ideas, analyzing the rhythmic patterns for yourself. You will discover that this is a necessary stage in your development especially when it comes to soloing. This is because despite the fact that there are massive resources for tabs and notation available there is still an awful lot of music that isn't available in this form. If you want to learn something you will often have to listen to things and work them out for yourself just as the great players of the 50s and 60s and had to do. This is not as difficult as you may at first think.
Try this out playing a major scale and then trying to work out a simple melody based on that scale, such as the tune to your favourite TV show or the national anthem. In so doing you will really zone in to what you are hearing and begin to recognize how the intervals in the scale work. With a little practice you will become better and better as your ear becomes more in tune and soon enough you will be able to work whole albums of riffs and chord progressions.
Together with this, it is often the case that even if your desired repertoire is available in tab and notation form, complex music still has to be listened to very carefully whilst reading the transcriptions. The unorthodox and groovy rhythm play of Jimi Hendrix is a formidable exercise if you attempt to read the music alone. By listening into what he is playing and by looping and repeating over and over you can really get into what is contained in the recordings in a way that doesn't come across from solely reading the music.
This is often overlooked in music education, but it is of singular importance for the musician. Analysis of what others have done transmits into greater accuracy in your own playing.
Finally, and this is of utmost importance to any budding songwriters and also for those studying music that are required to create their own pieces. Composition helps you to delve deeper into exactly what kinds of music you like and what kind of musician you want to be. The more melodies and songs that you compose the more you begin to focus in on what it is that you really love to play and listen to above all else. This may take time and a lot of writing before you become really happy in what you achieve but it is a necessary stage in your musical development and is the only way to get really good at the guitar and help to find yourself as a musician.
For Over 100 Guitar lessons and resources, visit http://www.guitar4free.com/
And for additional tips on music theory, writing and notation see http://guitar4freenewsandthoughts.blogspot.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment