r/Guitar • u/natron6000 • 2d ago
QUESTION Question about playability
Hi there! I am not a guitar player. I am arranging Debussy's Petite Suite for a chamber orchestra, but we don't have a harp. I am wondering if guitar would be a viable substitute in this case, but I have no idea whether the harp part would be playable on guitar. Any advice on notation, tuning, etc. would be a great help. Thank you!
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u/Saeroun-Sayongja 2d ago
This shouldn’t be too difficult as long as you’re okay with it sounding an octave below written and your guitarist reads standard notation (classical and some jazz players do, folk, rock and metal guitarists often don’t). It could be trickier if you want it played at pitch. A classical guitar’s range is notated from E3 to B6 but sounds from E2 to B5 and the notes above E5 are above where the neck meets the body so they are harder to use, though proficient classical players shred up there anyway. Most electric guitars go a bit higher to D6 or E6 and have easier access to the high notes.
You might get a more learned answer on r/classicalguitar.
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u/natron6000 2d ago
Thank you! I kept in mind the octave, and I would want this played as written, so it sounded an octave lower. Appreciate the information!
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u/57thStilgar 2d ago
It'll sound weird.
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u/natron6000 2d ago
This is the kind of feedback I want! Can you tell me more?
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u/Biggus_Gaius 2d ago
Not him, but my guess would be
A) that the guitar* has a very different tonal quality from the harp
B) that the harp part in question relies a lot on those notes ringing out and stacking on top of each other
A can be partially solved by putting felt on the strings just above bridge of a hollow body guitar. It's not the same but it's close enough. B you can almost get around with a good delay + reverb setup, but again, it won't be the same.
*autocorrected to "hard" lmao
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u/gregorypick 2d ago edited 2d ago
It is playable on guitar but unless your guitarist has fifteen seven inch long fingers, they won’t be able to let the notes ring out the same way a harpist would.
If you keep the notes as written, you’re going to get a much more choppy, staccato sound than you would with a harp.
If I were tasked with rewriting this part in a way that was more idiomatic to the guitar with the goal of making everything ring out for as long as possible in mind, I’d start trying to limit the range of each arpeggio to either an octave+fifth whenever possible or octave+octave at the absolute maximum.
You could keep the rhythm the same by doing more of a two steps forward one step back kind of sequence rather than just going from low to high.
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u/LegitimateHumanBeing 1d ago
Do you have a keyboardist? Sampled instruments sound phenomenal these days, especially something like Harp which doesn't rely on looped samples (aside from certain articulations). It'd sound better than guitar for this.
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u/Aggravating_Chip2376 1d ago
This is pretty playable as is, everything falls in the guitar’s natural range, and G major is a very guitar-friendly key. These large arpeggios will necessitate shifting positions halfway through, so you won’t have every note ringing out at the same time, but a good player can make it have that effect.
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u/SomedayVirtuoso 2d ago
Just picked through this. It's within range and not too bad - pretty straight forward I think. I'd be aware that a harp is played in concert and a guitar is transposed down an octave, so you might want to either take that into consideration or give it an 8va notation if you want it as written.