Matthew Mosier's Acoustic Guitar Tutorial

[MatthewMosierMusic]

Okay, so I had a lot of requests to do this, so here we go.

WRITING THE GUITAR PIECE:

The most important thing to keep in mind when writing a guitar piece is to make sure that you have all bases covered. By that, I mean, you need to make sure you have a defined bassline, melody, and harmonies in it. That can be covered in chords, but there are several ways to improve on that.

How matt does it:
I usually use the top two strings as a backbone for the track. they are unchanged throughout the song. Usually, i just hold down the first and second strings on the third fret throughout the song (trick to figuring out how to play my songs!!). Then, I make a solid chord progression incorporating those notes, changing the root notes around the chord (giving chords like G/B).




Another thing I'd like to stress about writing an acoustic guitar piece like this is... Dont rush writing it. you have to use the most important music-writing tool you have: your heart. you have to really feel it. A trick to practicing this is to just improvise. Once every few days, just pick up the guitar and jam. pick a random capo, change the tuning if it helps (i reccomend DADGAD) and go. now, while you are doing this, "think" the notes in your head along with yourself. Kinda hum it in your head, know what i mean? Soon, you will be able to think of a riff, sit down, and play it.
Do this, and your writing style will come straight from the soul. it adds that spark to an acoustic song.



RECORDING THE GUITAR PARTS:

First tip I have to say (and this goes to everything) is record softly. turn the volume down on you mic, then record! You can boost the audio later.

How matt does it:
You guys are gonna laugh, but I just compress the track as soon as its recorded. simply because it brings the track up to 0dB. The key is to try and not overcompress the song.

Second: Mixing. BEWARE OF CLIPPING! This goes back to the first tip. Record low, then boost. Keep in mind that as you add more tracks, your overall volume is gonna increase. So just because the track isn't clipping, doesn't mean its not gonna clip when you mix down and export.

Also, for some reason, when people record acoustics, the EQ seems to be really out of whack. If you have audacity (and its free so why dont you?!) you can check the overall mixing on a spectrum. it shows you the volume of each frequency on a graph. take that, then make sure its all evened out. usually, the subs are killer high. Be careful of that. (I only just learned this one XD)


Thats all I have for now, but if you have any other questions, feel free to ask!!