Write Something With Arpeggios

You don't have to write a whole song. You don't even have to write a whole section. A chord progression would be fine! Record it to your phone and upload it to the community forum! If you want to get a little fancier, you could use recording software to write a whole song with bass, drums, guitar, a vocal melody, lyrics, etc - if you WANT to do that, you absolutely can. But you don't have to.

The goal of the Community Challenge is to remind of the joy of MAKING music. Yes, learning songs is important. Yes, practicing technique is important. Yes, learning music theory is important. But to me, making music is the most fulfilling and satisfying musical action one can take.

In this case, just write a little something - even just a chord progression or a guitar melody - and make sure that you're using arpeggios somewhere in there.

An arpeggio is simply playing the notes of a chord, in order. It could be root, third, fifth or third, fifth, root or fifth, root, third. Or if you want to get fancy, you could include 7ths and 9ths or something.

If you need to brush up on (or learn) your roots, thirds, and fifths, I recommend checking out Music Theory for Guitar.

Post your creations to the community forum

Make Your Own Limitations and Stick To Them

This challenge is a bit of a tightrope. The goal is to FIRST sit down and decide on some limitations for yourself. This could be something technique focused like:
• Only ever play two notes at a time
• Play as many open notes as possible at all times
• Only use bar chords
• Write a melody that emphasizes hammer-ons

Or you could go music-theory focused:
• Only use minor chords
• Only use major chords
• Write in a specific mode
• Implement fifths and major sixths into your melody

Or you could go emotion-based:
• Write something sad
• Write something happy, with a sad section
• Write something hopeful

The idea is that you come up with parameters/limitations for yourself FIRST, and THEN you start writing. Again, you don't have to write something difficult - it could be simply a chord progression or a single-note melody. But you must try as hard as you can to fulfill the limitations you've put on yourself.

Have fun! And remember, you're not setting out to create the masterpiece of your life, you're just practicing creating your own music.

Write something with fingerpicking.

This is pretty straightforward - You could write a folky chord progression on acoustic guitar. You could write an electric guitar part using fingerpicking. You could play a melody without a pick. It could be something elaborate or something simple. A five second blip recorded to a cell phone or a full blown multitrack song recorded in your home studio. Whatever it is, here are the only rules:

1. You must write something new, something that didn't exist before you read this post.
2. You must use your fingers to perform at least the initial/main guitar part.

Write Something “Sign Painter Style”

What the heck do I mean by "sign painter style?"

To be honest, I'm not sure yet. But I watched this video of a guy doing some brush lettering this week and I was feeling inspired.

Sometimes when you're writing music, it can be useful (and fun!) to draw inspiration from something or someone outside of music. In this case, we've got a guy showing how a steady hand and a lot of practice can result in some beautiful lettering. He's not doing anything very complex. He's not stopping to think. Not second guessing or analyzing his progress so far. There isn't room for that. He's just doing something he's done a million times.

For musicians, it's easy to write a little bit, and then stop to wonder if it could be different. I've also had this thought more than a few times: "If it's hard for me to play, it must be good music." This is not always the case. In fact, I try to ignore that reasoning because it usually leads me down the wrong path.

On the flip side, there are things most of us do that are not very difficult at all for us. Maybe it's a pentatonic scale. Maybe it's a few chords you're very comfortable with. Maybe there is a certain scale in a certain position that you always warm up with. Use these things as your starting point.

For this challenge, try writing something thats easy FOR YOU, being sure to emphasize the "FOR YOU" part.

Whatever comes naturally, whatever feels comfortable, whatever that stuff is that you usually noodle around with, try starting there.

You don't have to record in one take, but if you're doing take after take and still not getting it, that might mean you're not in your comfort zone!

Wether you write a whole song, a chord progression, multiple tracks, or a very simple single-guitar pentatonic noodle, start writing from a place where you're very comfortable. The results might feel simple, because they will be easy for YOU.

Write something weird!

"Weird" is a completely subjective term. The idea here is to not take yourself too seriously - an important aspect of being a good musician! "Weird" here could mean a chord progression that doesn't quite make sense or has a wonky chord in there. It could mean a melody that meanders too much or jumps around a wide range. It could be a meter that switches from 3/4 to 4/4 or from 5/4 to 3/4. It could be a weird guitar tone that makes you laugh because it doesn't feel like a guitar. It could be a composition where you just leave too much space, then jam too much stuff into another area.

One of the advantages of exploring deliberately weird things, is that you quite often stumble upon things that end up being kind of cool! If you accidentally stumble upon something cool, you are absolutely welcome to share that too!

Focus on Dynamics

We've already covered this concept in Community Challenge 08, when I asked you to write something with extreme dynamics. I don't need extreme dynamics this time, I just need you to write with dynamics in mind.

The word "dynamics" basically refers to the sheer volume you're putting out. In classical music, you'll see dynamic markings like "p" for "piano" which translates to "quiet" or you'll see "forte" for "loud." There is a lot of variety in sheet music for this kind of thing. Sometimes you'll see "pppp" which would mean "play really really soft" or "ffff" which means "play really really loud" or even "mp" which stands for "mezzo-piano" or "moderately quiet."

What I need from you for this challenge:
1. Think about wether you want to focus on one louder section and one soft section, or if you want to play louder than usual for the whole song, or quieter than usual. The emphasis here is for you to observe
A) what is your personal middle-of-the-road volume/intensity/effort and how would you go about deliberately playing significantly quieter or louder than that?
B) how can you write some music that makes you think about playing quieter and/or louder than you usually do.

2. When you submit your creation to the community forum, give an explanation of the dynamic flow of your creation. It could be "In this 8 second voice memo, I was trying to play softly on X, Y, and Z chords, then I tried to gradually increase the intensity and volume until I reached this H, I, J section where I dug in deeper to make it feel much more intense."

Here are a few things to consider: volume and intensity are relative. Something might be "louder" but not played very intensely. For example, you could turn the volume up on your amp and be WAY louder, but physically strum the strings at the same intensity. In my opinion, the goal of dynamics is to increase or decrease emotional intensity. Ideally, your body language should match the intensity you want your audience to feel. So strumming or picking softly will feel relaxing and gentle and strumming really hard or picking really hard will FEEL intense. Basically, "volume" is a nice quick way to think of dynamics, but if you think of dynamics as "physical effort," it is easier to imagine how dynamics actually translate to guitar.

Team up with another Patron!

I'm so excited to see what happens with this one! There are a couple of tricky things about something like this, so I'll have to throw down some suggestions:

1. THOSE OF YOU WITH DAW CAPABILITIES: If you'd like to participate in this challenge, I'd love for you to type something like "I'm a DAW person" in the comments here or on the community forum.

2. THOSE OF YOU WITHOUT DAW CAPABILITIES: If you'd like to participate, please comment below or in the community forum saying something like "I am NOT a DAW person."

3. For ease of use, each track you share with another patron will require an accurate count-in or either one or two measures. This can be spoken (eg. "1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4" then music) OR you and your partner can establish a count in that you both agree to (eg. two measures of drum beat or two measures of muted strums) THIS IS CRUCIAL

You're more than welcome to work with more than one person AND you're more than welcome to work DAW-DAW or non-DAW to non-DAW, but let me lay out a few scenarios:

IN GENERAL, STICK WITH WRITING SIMPLE THINGS SO YOU CAN FOCUS ON WRITING "TOGETHER"

IN GENERAL, IT IS EASIEST TO USE A DAW FOR THIS PROCESS, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'D LIKE TO PASS TRACKS BACK AND FORTH TOGETHER A FEW TIMES, BUT OTHER METHODS ARE POSSIBLE.

I'll try to lay out options for every situation here:

1. Two non-DAW patrons writing together: If you and your writing partner do NOT have a DAW, you gotta at least have a phone to record with PLUS a separate device for playing your partner's tracks through speakers. The idea here is important: Pick one person to start the writing process with something like a chord progression. Record your progression (making sure to count yourself in in some obvious way) and send it to your partner. Your partner can then open the file, listen to it on speakers, and then (with their phone) record themselves playing along with the track on speakers. This is important so you can capture both YOUR idea AND your partners recording on one track. This is less than ideal, and you likely won't be able to add many layers due to lack of mixing abilities and whatnot, but if you don't have a DAW it's worth a try.

2. One non-DAW Patron and one DAW Patron: This situation is a little better, but also more one-sided. Probably the best idea in this situation is to have the NON-DAW Patron record something first, making sure to count in AND play something simple enough that it's EASY to keep good time. Then send that to the DAW person, who can import it into their computer and record over the top of it. The downside here is that it can still be hard to play in time so the initial person needs to really play something simple enough that they can really play nicely in time.

3. Two DAW people: You've got the easiest time. STEP 1: pick a tempo and make sure your project's BPM is always set to that tempo when you're adding layers. STEP 2, pick someone to write first. Maybe one person starts with a drum beat and the other person adds the first guitar, then sends it back. The coolest thing about this setup is that you can send the track back and forth to each other without ANY degradation of tone or mix. One person could be the "Master mixer" - meaning the person who has the main project file (like the Logic Pro or GarageBand project file.) This person has the job of compiling each separate audio track and mixing as you go.

4. Oldschool aka "In person:" Remember that thing we all used to do so often before March of 2020? That thing where you knock on someone's door and hang out inside? If you feel safe from Covid AND you know someone you could collaborate with in person, this is such a fun option.

To be clear: I don't necessarily condone meeting strangers you meet on the internet! You could collaborate with a friend and ask your friend if you can post audio to our community. Or you can try it out and just report back on the community forum about how it went.

If you've got a rapport with someone in the community forum AND you somehow happen to live close to each other, that might be a fun conversation to have with that person.

POST YOUR CREATIONS, THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PROCESS, AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS ON THE COMMUNITY FORUM.

Reach out to me via private message here or on the community forum if you can't find someone to work with and I'll try to link you up with someone. Or just post in the comments. We'll get it figured out.

Write something in 3/4 or 6/8

Time signatures are not SAID as a fraction even though they are a fraction.

We say "three-four time" or "six-eight time" but it's actually easier to think of them as fractions when trying to apply them in real life. But hold that thought while I explain a few things.

…Continue this post on Patreon.