How To Write For Guitar So That Your Guitarist Loves You (Part 1)

Scoring for guitar has its specifics given by the anatomy of the instrument and the way it is played. Piano-based composers, therefore, often have a hard time writing for guitar so that their music sounds idiomatic to the instrument, or worse, so that it’s at all playable. This series of articles will hopefully help these composers better understand how to score for guitar so that a) guitarists love playing their music and b) they save time and money in guitar recording sessions.

Guitar — A Transposing Instrument?

Let’s talk about the simplest of the facts today, which, however, very often goes completely unnoticed: Guitar sounds one octave lower than written. Plus, it is always notated in treble clef.

The six open strings of a guitar (standard tuning) — sounding and written pitches.

Scholars have no consensus on whether to call the guitar a transposing or a concert instrument. This is most likely because, unlike the typical transposing instruments such as some woodwind or brass instruments, the guitar remains on its transposed pitches even in a concert pitch full score (just like double bass, for example). For our practical purposes, however, this doesn’t matter. The fact to remember here is that the guitar always sounds one octave lower than notated.

The six strings in action.

Potential Issues

Too often have I been handed guitar parts in recording sessions in which the music was notated at a concert pitch. While it shouldn’t be a problem for any experienced guitarist to read an octave higher (we do it all the time when reading lead sheets), it doesn’t make the sight-reading any more comfortable. Plus, if the music is intended to be played on the lower strings, it can become downright unreadable (or at least un-sight-readable).

For example, even though I am entirely fluent with bass clef, reading a guitar part in bass clef would be a nightmare, especially in a live room. It’s doable, but it takes a much longer time to get it right, and the likelihood of reading errors goes up. Or let’s say that you know that guitar is to be notated in treble clef, but you forget about the transposition. Just recently, I was given such a guitar part. Well, good luck reading this note without having to stop playing to decode it first. :-)

Of course, because of the octave transposition, the correct way to notate it is the following:

As a composer or producer, it is always in your best interest to score so that no time is wasted during a recording session or rehearsal, no matter what instrument you are writing for.

It’s Simple!

So, next time you compose a melody or accompaniment for guitar, make sure you notate it an octave higher than what you play on the piano. It’s as simple as that! Here are two examples to help you:

C Major Scale — sounding and notated for guitar.

A Minor Arpeggio — sounding and notated for guitar.

As mentioned above, if you write orchestral music with guitar in it, please remember that the guitar remains “transposed” even in a concert full score, unlike woodwind or brass instruments.

Where To Get Help

If you are unsure about the playability or readability of the guitar part that you have written, there is a very helpful Facebook group where you can have it checked.

I hope that this short article has helped you understand one of the basics of scoring for guitar. In the coming articles, we’ll tackle some other typical mistakes that many non-guitar-based composers make in their guitar scoring.

Feel free to let me know how you like this series or what you would like me to cover by sending me a message on Facebook or Instagram.

Other articles of the series:

Part 2 — The Layout of the Fingerboard

Part 3 — Chord Voicings