In today’s lesson, we will show you 5 things you need to make an acoustic version of a song, and we will talk about imagination, harmonic knowledge, the possibility of extending chords, among other resources.

Imagination:

When we make the decision to make the acoustic version of a song, we must bear in mind that the general idea is to make a new version, something different in relation to the original version that we know of the song; this requires imagination and creativity to test how many things are necessary, styles, rhythms, chords, sounds, you must be willing to appropriate the song.

Find the tone

Perhaps this is the most difficult step and the most important; recognizing the tone will help us to know what notes we have available, what chords we can use and the general language of the song.

Assemble the scale

Being able to assemble the scale of the song will undoubtedly help us to know what notes we have available; once we have found the tone, we must proceed to assemble the scale; remember the two formulas for the major and minor scale:

Major scale: TT m TTT m

Minor scale: T m TT m TT

With this, we can put together the scale we need and thus proceed with our musical arrangement.

Harmony of scales

Each major and minor scale generates a chord package; we will find major, minor and diminished chords; this is useful when we have identified the tone and armed the scale since if we come from a theme that is usually played with power chords, we need to know what chords they are major and which are minor to put together our arrangement, let’s remember which is the chord structure of the major scale and the minor scale:

Major scale:

• I iim iiim IV V vim vii °
• Minor scale
• im ii ° III ivm vm VI VII
• Chord extensions

Chords can evolve, this means that they can be more than major and minor, this will allow us to achieve a more interesting sound in our arrangement, sevenths, ninths and other colours can make a very important difference, there are some basic rules of harmony that we can use for this purpose:

• A major chord can be Maj7, Maj9 or Maj7 # 11
• A minor chord can be m7, m9 and m11
• A major key chord can be 7, 9, 9, 13
• A minor key dominant chord can be 7, b9, # 9, b9 b13.

Mastering these elements will undoubtedly help you make an interesting arrangement of the song you want; the road is long, but the complicated things are worth it, and they are more fun.

These types of resources are acquired by taking our complete guitar course, in which you will find all the necessary theory, chords and scales to master the instrument; the course is available for acoustic guitar and electric guitar.

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