When I am composing and arranging music, I like to think as an orchestrator. As the guitarist, I try to represent just about everything that’s in the arrangement – the drum syncopations, horn parts, keyboards, etc. – in multiple guitar parts. I might start with a bass-like theme, along the lines of Figure 1.
Playing in the key of G, I begin on a low G and then playing a G one octave higher on the last 16th note of beat 1. After a 16th rest on beat 2, the high G is played again, followed by E to F in eighth notes. I’ve now established a “16th-note grid” that serves to represent the rhythmic syncopation of the music.
