Mel Bay Study Group The Mel Bay Method For Guitar According To "THE Principles" Checkpoint #4, Page#25-26...Two Voices On One Staff |
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After "The Principles",the metronome is the most important
practice tool you can use. Used as shown in
" The Principles", it will increase your rate of progress faster than anything
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Guitar students are often confused about the way music in two voices is notated
for guitar. In the Mel Bay Method, we see this for the first time on page 25. Let's go
into this subject a bit, and make sure we understand what we are looking at. The main requirement a "voice" must have is that it performs a discrete and identifiable musical function.
In Fig.1 below, we see two voices, the first would be played by Player 1, the second by Player 2. There are 4 beats in the measure, and on each beat, each player has something to do or not do. For example, on beat 1, Player 1 plays a C note, and player 2 does nothing. On beat 2, Player 1 plays another C note, and Player 2 plays an E. The main point to appreciate is that each player has their own voice to play, and each has 4 beats in the measure, but those beats run PARALLEL. That is, Player 1's beat 1 happens at the same time as Player 2's beat one. and so forth. Fig. 1 Two Voices Written of Two Staves
In guitar music, we often combine two or more voices onto one staff. We show the separation between the two voices by the direction the stems of the notes are pointing. Player 1's voice has the stems pointing upward, Player 2's has the stems pointing downward. Fig. 2 Same Two Voices, Written On One Staff
This combining of the voices is done for convenience sake, but it often leads to confusion. Students will often look at such a measure as if the two voices were to be played in linear fashion, one after the other, instead of parallel, both voices starting on beat one and ending on beat 4. This mistake is most often made on a measure that looks like this: Fig. 3
A student will look at this, and think that the first note should be played, and then held for 3 beats, (since the C note does get 3 beats), and after a count of 3, the first chord should be played. This is incorrect. This would put a total of 6 beats in the measure, double the correct number of beats. This mis-understanding comes from the fact that the student is unknowingly assuming that the two voices are played one after another, and not SIMULTANEOUSLY. So, the correct understanding is that the bass note is played, and IS held for beats 1, 2, and 3. But, WHILE it is being held for beat two, the first chord of the top voice is played, and WHILE the first note is being held for beat 3, the second top chord is played, exactly as it would be if there were two players playing, one doing the top voice, and one doing the bottom. If Fig. 3 were written for two separate players, it would look like this:
Fig. 4
This whole thing can be confusing, because the arranger of a piece of music may write some of the measures in one voice, and some in two voices. An example of this is "Gliding Along" on page 25. The first two measures are ONE voice, the next two measures are in TWO voices. Now you know why it looks the way it does! Without understanding this, you would think that all of a sudden, there are six beats in the measure. You will find other examples of this "on again-off again" arranging style throughout the book, a sin "Home On The Range", p. 39, and "In The Evening By The Moonlight", p. 36.
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