Arranging chord solos

I'm getting better at putting together pleasing, simple chord solos. I was just wondering, when you folks put an arrangement together do you write them down? For me that is a laborious project.

If you put them on paper, what form do you put it in? Tabs or notes on a staff? Is there an easier way?

whistleman123 said:

I'm getting better at putting together pleasing, simple chord solos. I was just wondering, when you folks put an arrangement together do you write them down? For me that is a laborious project.

If you put them on paper, what form do you put it in? Tabs or notes on a staff? Is there an easier way?

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I enter the whole thing into Guitar Pro 6 for Windows, in both tab and standard notation above it. It puts nice ukulele chord diagrams above too.

Me too, I use gp6. Sometimes it is a lot of work, but I like the written record of what I have done.
There are times I may go without playing the song and the paper helps me remember. I have also found writing the sheet sometimes helps me find improvements.

I have always thought/believed/understood that the chord chart with extensions is meant to be a sort of chord melody notation system. If I've read the history correctly, those tin pan alley musicians were pretty fluent and it came easily to them. At this point, It fits the term "arcane" pretty well...and it doesn't always work. Not every fingering has a sensible chord name. Cold hard fact of 4-string life.

Of course, just about every Uke book uses fret-string diagrams. I tried that for a while but I found it awkward. Those ink stamps go on crooked and not on a line. An elephant-in-the-room problem with them. I prototyped a couple alignment jigs but just too much of a production. Pre-printed fret-string stickers sort of work but the only ones I could find were too big ( to fit over a standard treble staff ) and, again, hard to stick on in a clean, straight line. I've thought about printing them out on mailing labels, but there you go again with a big production.

In summary ( for me ):
chord names with extensions --- arcane
chord diagrams --- tiresome
Next idea ?

My arrangements tend to be "guidelines" that I will improvise around. If I document it at all, it's usually more of a lead sheet than a full blown arrangement.

pointpergame said:

chord names with extensions

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Can you give an example of what you mean by this? Do you just mean stuff like "Cm9" or "EbM7b5" ? If so I think that would be hard to describe a chord melody with.

|: 30 40 30 40 :| x03x-25 0x3x-21 x00x 07xx | 57x7 05x5 54x3-47 34 |
xx10-13 x0x0-23 x51x-34 x01x-23 | xx10-13 32 x03x 40 |

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So complicated, you'd be better off using proper tab or just learning to read notation, rather than such a complex system!

ubulele said:

I think it's a nice bridge notation for weaning people off tab and into standard notation...

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Why do you need to "wean people off tab"? Standard notation is actually not a replacement for tab. They're complementary, not mutually exclusive.

If anything, tab when used fully, contains more data. And it's trivial to add note durations to it.

ubulele said:

...and supplemental notation made the rest of the mechanics clear. Tab is... good for showing things like picking patterns and campanella patterns. But beyond that it mostly holds people back.

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So you admit that standard notation must be supplemented to show what tab does, and there are specific guitaristic ways of playing that tab may even be superior at demonstrating, yet I'm "myopic" and have "limited knowledge" for suggesting... the exact same thing? I just want to see if I understand you correctly.

TLDR

And I apologize to the OP for responding to "ubulele's" trolling "weaning" comment. I really should know better than to feed trolls. Head meet wall.

As someone who reads staff notation fluently, I find tablature a more precise system for notating chord/melody solos.