Effective Chord Chart Writing

Transcription

1 Effective Chord Chart Writing There is a saying which has been attributed to Albert Einstein which sums up the art of effective chart writing: Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler Any working musician will have a wealth of experience playing from song charts that are confusing, incomplete, difficult to read, incorrect, or difficult to follow It is as much an error for a song part to contain too much information as it is for the part to contain too little Music copyists (chart writers) have been guilty of both trying to fit too many measures on a line (making a part difficult to read) or including too few measures A good music copyist will be conscious of trying to group phrases together so the entire phrase may be easily read as a whole, and will take care that page breaks occur only in simple passages (before or after a rest) and that, as much as possible, repeat signs don t force a player to jump between multiple pages In orchestral music, a badly placed page-turn in the string parts may mean the difference between a good performance and a catastrophic one Before the initial performance of his Eighth Symphony in 1910, in a letter to his wife, Gustav Mahler expressed his frustration with poor music manuscript preparation by his copyist: What this copyist has done to me is simply too dreadful In every part, wherever an instrument has a longer passage of rests, instead of writing them out in full, the lazy pig has merely written tacet So now, not only are the players unable to find their bearings but when I, poor devil, want to change the orchestration, instead of merely writing in the necessary bars at the appropriate place, I also have to write out the entire tacet passage This is wasting hours and hours of my time Of course, most of our arranging is done in the context of smaller worship bands and chord charts but the same principles apply to all music notation A well-written chart will take time to create, but it will end up saving time in the long run With a well-crafted chart there s a better chance of everyone getting through a song the first time Obviously, you may need to rehearse the song many times and tweak your performance, but when everyone knows what to do from the start you can begin to feel comfortable and confident from the very first run-through Less Discussion; More Music A clear, detailed chart will mean more time playing and less time talking about how to play the song Consistent interpretation by all band members Is there a specific rhythm everyone needs to catch? A particular measure and beat where the drummer and bass player enter together? Should the 3rd Verse be played more softly and only by the acoustic instruments? SO, WHAT ELEMENTS SHOULD A WELL-WRITTEN CHART CONTAIN? This is common sense, but think along with me about what you would wish to know if you had to sight-read a band chart and play along with a group of musicians there are some essentials, and some other chord chart elements that would be extremely helpful You should assume the people reading your charts are completely unfamiliar with the song Before even beginning to read notes or chords, any player would want to know the following: The time signature - are we in 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, 12/8; how do I count the measures? The tempo - is this a fast or slow song? The more specific information I have the better for instance, ast doesn t tell me much but q = 127 gives me an exact reference The key signature - the first chord might or might not be an indication of the key and if we re reading a numbers chart you can t play a single chord without knowing the key A general idea of the feel would be helpful Blues Shuffle, Power Rock, Bluegrass 2-beat, and similar markings can tell a player much about what kind of feel to play

2 When should each instrument come in? If the first 16 bars is keyboard only, and the bass part enters with the drummer on the pickup to bar 17 how else will we know unless the chart tells us? The dynamic level for each section of the song This is going to be a mighty boring arrangement if every part plays medium loud from the first note to the end SO WHAT MAKES A WELL-WRITTEN CHART? In order to answer this question, I think it would be useful to first take a look at a very badly written chart, and sadly this is the type of chart that often are downloaded from the Internet and supplied to musicians in churches

3 You may well ask, What makes this bad? It looks like the kind of chart I ve played from many times irst, let s consider a few questions that may help us identify deficiencies: What are we supposed to play as an intro? Surely the vocal doesn t come in without any reference to pitch or key I m unfamiliar with this song how many beats should I play the first chord for? I don t know what the time signature is do I hold the C2 chord for 1 measure? There are a lot of words here perhaps I play the chord for 4 measures or 31/2 or 2 There s simply no way to tell Knowing what time signature the song is in would help, but would not solve this issue Should my instrumental part come in right at the beginning or wait until later? What part of this would we consider to be the VERSE and which part is a CHORUS? Do any of these sections (or other un-named sections) repeat as part of this arrangement? At the end of the 3rd line there is a D chord and a G/B chord - what rhythm should be played between these two chords? Is there only one rhythm to be played throughout this whole song no special rhythms, stops or holds? How does this song end? Does the song maintain the same tempo until the end or should it ritard before the ending? With no contrast in typeface or size between lyrics and (small) chords, does this chart seem easy to follow? And as a final observation how do we know the chords (or even the lyrics) in a poorly-written chart downloaded from the Internet are correct? Next, let s identify a few features that make reading and following a well-written chart easier: A well-written chart eliminates un-necessary information The chart in the previous example relies upon the reader to already know the song being played If you are a vocalist you don t need the chords; if you re an instrumentalist the lyrics are superfluous A well-written chart should be easily readable from a distance or in poor lighting conditions You can t control the environment that players may face while having to read your chart Use BIG BOLD BLACK text for chord symbols and directions The previous chart used the same size for lyrics and chords, making it more difficult to follow the chord line A well-written chart will provide specific directions about what type of sound is wanted By example, each of these phrases would indicate a distinct direction to a guitarist: Clean Guitar sound, Distorted Elec Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, inger picking, Guitar Strum, Power Chords In the same way keyboardists often benefit from being given patch change directions: Acoustic Piano, Rhodes sound, Chorused Electric Piano, Synth Pad, Strings, B3 Organ w/leslie, etc Even drummers will appreciate notations such as: Cross-stick Snare, 4 on the loor, Hat & Kick only, Tom Groove, Marching Snare, etc A well-written chart will group together musical phrases in a way that makes each phrase easy to follow If the song contains 4-bar phrases, start each phrase at the beginning of a line and end each phrase at the end of a line If a phrase contains an extra measure, group that measure with the rest of the phrase A well-written chart will clearly label each section so that a song leader can give on-the-fly verbal directions, like Play the final CHORUS twice before proceeding to the TAG for the end A well-written chart will have a clear roadmap between sections 1st and 2nd endings, repeats, DS and Coda sections will be clearly marked Well-written charts will clearly show changes in time signature and key, dynamics for each section, or feel A well-written chart will notate special rhythms, articulations (like short notes or accents), chords to be played and held as a diamond, or actual notes to be played if needed (or instance, you might indicate specific walk-down notes which occur in the bass part or a particular melody to be played by the guitar or keyboard) Let s take a look at a better example of chart writing on the following page

4 Driving Rock Beat q = 122 All In from Countoff [I\n\t\ro] Straight â's f / / / / Blessed Be Your Name / / / / Key of 4/4 time [V\s\ \1\-\2] Gm 7 / / / / [P\r\e\-\C\h] Drums Play Thru Rests Œ Ó Œ Bb Œ Ó Œ Ó Ó Gm7 Œ Ó Œ Ó Gm 7 Œ Œ [C\ho] ƒ Gm 7 Gm 7 E b [V\s\ \3\-4] [P\r\e\-\C\h] [C\ho] ƒ Play 2xs Suddenly softer All Instruments 8th Notes - Building Gm 7 Gm COPYRIGHT

5 WHAT EATURES DO YOU NOTICE WHICH MAKE THIS CHART EASIER TO READ? This particular chart is a hybrid it uses the Nashville Number system format, but specifies chord names instead of numbers The benefit of a chart like this is that your players don t have to figure out chords on the fly The drawbacks of a chart which specifies chord names instead of numbers are these: 1) isn t a particularly easy guitar key to play in I think a guitarist might prefer to Capo 1 fret and play in E A Number Chart would let them quickly read in any key they choose to play in 2) Transposing instruments such as Trumpet or Saxophone could read from a Number Chart and improvise, but these chord names would be wrong for non-c pitched instruments 3) A number chart gives flexibility in rehearsals You may arrive at rehearsal and find your singer s range can t quite reach the high notes of this arrangement A number chart would let everyone in the band immediately adapt to a new key Or your rehearsal leader might easily insert a modulation up 1 whole step before the final repeated chorus without needing to re-write your chart You may notice features that I won t mention here, but these some of the obvious advantages of this chart to me: The chord symbols are bold and large enough to be read in low light, or from a distance Each section is clearly marked and there is a little extra vertical space between each section, making it visually easier to navigate between sections Duplication and clutter is minimized by using repeats When sections of the song repeat, like the Verse 3-4 and Pre-Chorus, instead of chords being duplicated appropriate instructions are noted The chord symbols for each measure line up in vertical columns It s easy to tell if you are in measure 1, 2, 3, or 4 of a musical phrase The one phrase which contains a 5th measure sticks out to the right by itself and has a to indicate that an extra measure exists in that phrase Split measures have clear markings to indicate specific beats where the chords change Where needed (and only where needed) specific rhythms, rests, and diamonds are specified