For composing: could a crap sounding guitar be preferable to a good onr?

Smellyfingers

Having up the idea of becoming a performance maestro on the acoustic, I am now using my guitar mainly to compose chord or note progressions, in the vague hope they may be commercial or taken up by someone.

I started by using my top notch Collings(now sold). The issue is it made every chord sound interestingly complex  or deep ( particularly when the chord notes were arpeggiated ). This kind of distracted from being able to judge wether the selected chords sounded good or shit when played next to each other.

So now I am using a much cheaper( though still quality) Yamaha, which applies a somewhat more rigorous judgement on the quality of the note progressions.

The question now should I give up all my expensive kit for a £ 100 Harley Benton acoustic- on the basis that if my compositions sound vaguely good on it, that means they have passed the ultimate test?

I am not comparing myself, but the renowned music producer Quincy Jones used to, as a rule, play all his recordings through a really, really cheap and nasty sound system, using that sound as the ultimate arbiter of the quality  of his work.

bertie

just clean your strings with a duster,  the fluff residue will have the same effect.

Tannin

Not a Harley Benton. No to that. But something which intonates more-or-less correctly and has a decent if unmemorable tone but very little in the way of dynamics. I'm thinking of an old 1970s Eko. That would be perfect.

When I did my audio engineering course way back in the dark ages (we took our class notes using slates and lit the studio with candles) I was taught to monitor recordings on a selection of speakers, always including one very crappy set intended to more-or-less reproduce the tonal and dynamic range of a pocket transistor radio. Seems like a good rule to me (after adjusting to allow for improved playback devices these days).

monquixote

The crappy speakers thing is to make sure that all the elements of the song come through on something with limited frequency response.

Writing a song is about the harmonic content. I would want the best instrument possible for that.

Tannin

Limited dynamic range also. But yes.

Whistler

Tannin said:

I was taught to monitor recordings on a selection of speakers, always including one very crappy set intended to more-or-less reproduce the tonal and dynamic range of a pocket transistor radio.

I learned the same way as Tannin. These days more folk listen using a mobile phone than a transistor radio so I tend to check on the best and worst speakers I have to hand. If I had a transistor radio I would use that as well.

merlin

I would use the best instrument I have. Learn to not be distracted by the sound but listen to the chords themselves, not just the tone. 

Also, a beautiful sounding and playing instrument is more inspiring to pick up and play.

TheMadMick

Not sure how helpful this is but I have a selection of acoustics and I use the one(s) that get over the message of the song I'm playing. Rough rule of thumb, bright jangly for happy, warm, mellow and soft for reflective.

There is no right answer in my view.

Cirrus

Yeah different guitars bring out different stuff, there's no hard and fast rule.

SlopeSoarer

Honestly after my experience with my Harley Benton (CLP-15ME SolidWood), I'd say go for it! Maybe I got lucky (along with quite a few others).

As much as I enjoy and respect your posts @Tannin, when you dismiss the Harley Benton and talk about the intonation and unmemorable tone, are you talking from first hand experience? As I'd beg to differ.

Tannin

Cheers @SlopeSoarer I've never played a Harley Benton, but I've played plenty of cheap plywood Chinese and Indonesian guitars out of the same sweatshop factories. I don't have any time for them.

Musical_Mystery_Tour

Of more importance than what guitar you are using for composing, could be the fact that you are using a guitar at all.

It's not that you can't compose on a guitar - you certainly can - it's the fact that it can be difficult to come up with a something interesting when doing so, for a couple of reasons. First up, there is the fact that we typicaly use chord shapes and scale patterns, and a lot of the time this makes us go to familiar and comfortable places on an instrument we play regularly, so we can end up with derivative and not very interesting melodies and progressions because we don't go outside our comfort zone. Second, is that even if we do go somewhere unusual on the fretboard and come up with something different, we get limited by our typical favourite strumming and picking patterns too. It's far too easy to fall into that trap and get stuck creatively.

This is why I rarely write tunes on a guitar, or a keyboard. I come up with interesting melodies in my head, because there is no instrument's structure limiting where that can go. Then I keep the melody and rhythm going in my head for a few days to play around with it and develop it, and having done that, then I might pick up an instrument and figure out what the chords for that melody would, or could be.

As far as coming up with melodies goes, quite often I will spot a sign on a truck or a poster or some such, as I'm driving about, and I will immediately try to sing what I see is written. What that does, is force you to not use convenient 'moon and june' rhyming meters, because most posters and signs you see  do not have a convenient number of syllables and stanzas, so instantly trying to sing what is written forces you to come up with interesting intervals and rhythms to get something reasonably decent with the amount of syllables you see presented. This is why if you try this, it has to be absolutely spontaneous, don't think about what would fit nicely, just start singing whatever is written; you'll find it will send you in some really unusual melodic and rhythmic directions. It doesn't work one hundred percent of the time, but I can guarantee it will get you an interesting melody and rhythm which you would never have come up with just sat there with a guitar, and quite often it can trigger an idea for a lyric or song subject too. It also makes long boring drives much more fun and often productive.

I then recommend parking up your car full of components made in a Chinese sweatshop, going in your house and playing what you have come up with, on a Harley Benton, then posting it on here, using your computer or smartphone/tablet which was made in a Chinese sweatshop. :-)

Tannin

^ A classic LOLWiz

PS: Three cars in this household, none of them made in China, nor using Chinese-made components. It's very nearly impossible to buy a non-Chinese computer these days, though the motherboard is from Taiwan, the hard drives are from Thailand, and the SSDs from South Korea. 

Roland

monquixote said:

The crappy speakers thing is to make sure that all the elements of the song come through on something with limited frequency response.

Writing a song is about the harmonic content. I would want the best instrument possible for that.

It’s not often that I disagree with you, but on this occasion I would differentiate between inventing the core components of a composition, and then orchestrating around them. The core components are those things which the song will be remembered for. Typically the hook, a riff, a key or rhythmic change. These are where inspiration and a degree of novelty are required. Playing a quality instrument can distract from achieving that because you risk relying on the quality of the sound, rather than the quality of the invention. Many of the best inventions come without any instrument at all.

Getting philosophical for a minute, imposing constraints, such as poor quality instruments or no instrument at all, increases the probability of producing something out of the ordinary. From this might come something extraordinary.

Then, when it comes to orchestrating around those core components, a decent instrument is useful. There are a few pieces where the tone of the instrument is itself the novelty, such as the Celeste in the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, but these are inevitably few. 

Soupman

@Smellyfingers - stick with the Yamaha.
You need a half-decent tone to know what your stuff sounds like.
Also, the playback systems are more sophisticated these days (even mobiles have EQ settings for music).

Do you really want to regress to a mono cassette recorder from Woolworths of 1968 or so?
(If the answer to this is yes, I have one attached to a Sinclair ZX Spectrum you could have...)
 
 

guitarjack66

Let me play it and you'll have a crap sounding player on any value guitar you like. My name is Benton,Harley Benton.

Basher

Andy Partridge of XTC used to write songs on his daughter's crappy, cheap guitar so there might be something in it.

That said, he's songwriting royalty in my book and I'm pretty sure he'd get something of interest out of any noise making device.

DavidR

I can’t personally see any problem with doodling up a tune on any instrument you like to play irrespective of cost, country of origin, age or build. 

But……the ‘you like’ bit is the operative phrase. It has to be comfortable and playable. Any instrument which isn’t either of these things is going to inhibit creativity and annoy. 

Then work up the doodle on your ‘posher’ guitar for tone, dynamics and mood until, hey presto’ you have some shiny new sounds!

There are bad guitars in existence. But I would stick my neck and say most of them are going to be old. The standard of most new cheap acoustics now is acceptable. And some are very good. If you’re lucky you’ll trip over a brilliant one. All part of the journey!

Good starting point? Yamaha. 

Never played a Harley Benton but ostensibly sane people say good things about them so why not give them a go. 

In 2024 we are blessed to have so many options. ‘Twas not always thus. 

ICBM

Tannin said:

... something which intonates more-or-less correctly and has a decent if unmemorable tone but very little in the way of dynamics. I'm thinking of an old 1970s Eko. That would be perfect.

The singer I worked with for about ten years has one - we wrote all our best songs with it. I would say it was a bit better than they usually are, although it's certainly no Gibson/Martin/etc solid-wood guitar. It did certainly have something good about it that made for inspiring chord progressions and rhythms...

Smellyfingers

Musical_Mystery_Tour said:

Of more importance than what guitar you are using for composing, could be the fact that you are using a guitar at all.

It's not that you can't compose on a guitar - you certainly can - it's the fact that it can be difficult to come up with a something interesting when doing so, for a couple of reasons. First up, there is the fact that we typicaly use chord shapes and scale patterns, and a lot of the time this makes us go to familiar and comfortable places on an instrument we play regularly, so we can end up with derivative and not very interesting melodies and progressions because we don't go outside our comfort zone. Second, is that even if we do go somewhere unusual on the fretboard and come up with something different, we get limited by our typical favourite strumming and picking patterns too. It's far too easy to fall into that trap and get stuck creatively.

This is why I rarely write tunes on a guitar, or a keyboard. I come up with interesting melodies in my head, because there is no instrument's structure limiting where that can go. Then I keep the melody and rhythm going in my head for a few days to play around with it and develop it, and having done that, then I might pick up an instrument and figure out what the chords for that melody would, or could be.

As far as coming up with melodies goes, quite often I will spot a sign on a truck or a 

interesting comments. Regarding not being restricted by any instrument, I find it quite difficult from scratch compose new tunes in my head. But I take on board the fact that it can  dull just to be limited to chords or notes that you already know on a guitar or keyboard. The way I feel comfortable with  is to think of the lyrics first and then pick note progressions that seem to suit them. Perhaps it would be beneficial to be a bit more experimental about shapes on the fretboard

I agree that it is probably not great to spend a lot of time with a really horrible guitar. But I think there is an issue with very fine luthier or custom made instruments for song writing , because they are made to sound distinctive or unique, and this may mask the reality of how good or otherwise a composition is/ but maybe that’s overstating.

sir_strumalot

I can't see how using a crappy guitar will tell you anything about your composition- - you'd probably learn more playing it on a keyboard where it's easier to experiment with different chord voicings etc.