Proof of concept

It's been a while since I've composed anything. I've been pondering about how to combine my guitar playing with my orchestral stuff, and I've been experimenting with effects on orchestral instruments. Putting electric guitar over acoustic orchestral instruments hasn't worked for me too well in the past, so I am trying to bring those instruments closer to a guitar's distorted sound rather than vice versa.

Here's a (very) rough draft of the basic idea:

Rewind

I swear I didn't intend to copy Hans Zimmer's score for Inception, but when I added distortion to cello and double bass, it inevitably started to head in that direction. But as a fan of both metal and classical music I dig the mixture.

John Williams tastefully added some electric guitar to one of the tracks in Attack of the Clones (Zam The Assassin and The Chase Through Coruscant.)

What I'm hoping to do is write a guitar instrumental album but with orchestral instruments rather than the usual bass/drums/keys, since Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, John Petrucci, Eric Johnson et al. have all taken guitar music more or less as far as it can go in the rock idiom.

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

As far as it can go?

Stop.
Listen to Larry Coryells arrangement of 'House Burning Down.'
(A simple change in meter makes a whole new ball game)

Your piece is cool - sounds like waiting for Freddie Mercury - i.e. a Queen piece.

The backing needs less repetitious riffs, though. Good idea, but tweak it a bit. Make one a 7th the next a dim, so the rhythm remains but the anticipation gets thrown for a loop.

In classical the violas, cellos et cetera will start a theme and them run through the variations afford by the piece. If it's minor in flavor then the changes revolve around arpeggios 2,3 & 5,6 rather than 3,4 & 7,8.
But, by all means explore.

The guitar was fine. The almost harmonic squeal toward the end was great and like I said, I thought any second I'd be hearing some Mercury style vocals.

Thanks for the feedback! If I had a good voice, I'd definitely add vocals to all of this. But I'm mediocre at best.

I guess I should say that I do not feel like I can top what Eric Johnson and the rest of those guys can do with guitar/drums/bass, so I'm wussing out and trying something different. I'll check out that Coryell tune. And I'll definitely work on making things less repetitive. That's one of the evils of being able to do a Copy/Paste in Sibelius.

I like to play with patterns...As you look at the score, take every 4th measure and change something in the strings...or maybe every 6th, whatever.
Use call & answer.
And have the measured used diminish until both parts are playing in harmony.
There are SO many ways to change those 8 little notes.

As far as being able to better someones past work, you are thinking in the wrong direction.
Jimi didn't say to himself, "I want to play better than..." He merely saw standard tunes in a different light.
Perhaps...you want to mix real classical with the blues?
Have you ever tried to do the blues in an odd meter? 3/4?

Stilgar said:

As far as being able to better someones past work, you are thinking in the wrong direction.
Jimi didn't say to himself, "I want to play better than..." He merely saw standard tunes in a different light.
Perhaps...you want to mix real classical with the blues?
Have you ever tried to do the blues in an odd meter? 3/4?

Click to expand...

You make a good point. If I had access to a good vocalist, drummer and bassist I'd definitely try to do something rock-based at some point, simply because I dig rock music.

George Gershwin has probably done the best job so far of combining blues and jazz with classical music, e.g. Porgy and Bess. Scott Henderson, as you probably know, has done some great blues stuff in odd meters.

But I'll concede that rhetorically speaking someone could come along and take it further.