How I use Composer for making bass guitar sheets to accompany choral music

[Sherry C]

Hi friends,


It's been a while since I posted anything here, but not because I don't have sheets that I could share. For this particular post, though, I'm sharing some "what I do" tips for times when you may need to accompany someone but don't have a sheet of notation already written for your instrument.


As a rhythm player (I play bass mostly), I'm sometimes asked to accompany an ensemble of some type, but there is not a part already written for me. For example, just this Christmas a local choral group wanted drums and bass in addition to their piano accompaniment, so I and a drummer friend of mine joined in. He doesn't read music. I do read but can also "fake it", especially if I have something like a chord chart for guidance. In this instance there were only the choral sheets available with the vocals and piano, but no drums nor bass parts. Fortunately Composer is extremely helpful in such a situation.


I asked for a copy of the piano accompaniment for all the songs (there were 11 for this concert). I set up the songs using "Create a new song", setting it for my custom "Bass" template that I've made (you can make your own templates and save them using File/Save as template), meter, key, number of measures, song title, and then "Finish".


At this point, there are a few different ways I might approach the particular song. I might add another staff with the notes/lyrics for one of the choral parts (typically soprano since they lead a lot) as "cues" in case things change in the middle of a performance (have had that happen more than once ) If needed, I may add other parts, but I myself only use one staff for vocal cues, which may mean adding a parenthetical note to myself like "(Tenors)" or such. For such as that you can use Text/Free Text, but I find it more helpful to add it as a lyric, so I add a bogus note to the staff, put the lyric under it, then delete the note (or you can just leave the note there if it doesn't bother you). If it's a multi-word cue, just hold the "Shift" key down when adding spaces to keep the lyric box from advancing to the next note.


I then will add the chord names (Text/Chord names) if they are in the printed accompaniment. If they are not in the printed accompaniment, then I'll have a look at the bass clef of the piano accompaniment and see what the first bottom note is for each measure (or the chord that's there). That will typically give me the lead note for that measure unless it's an inverted chord, but that's been rare in the songs that I've seen. Depending on the style I may figure out the chords and add those chord names, and use the vocal notes and lyrics make sure the chord names are placed properly for the rhythm. It's also helpful to look and see if the chords change more frequently, and add additional ones as needed.


If there are particular musical phrases or licks that I think will fit well, I'll add the notes to the bass staff as a reminder to play that particular phrase. If I don't have any particular licks or phrases for a song (ie. I'm just "faking" a rhythm line), then I'll hide or remove the bass staff from the final Part printout to save space and use fewer pages.


When I'm done adding all the cue stuff and any phrases I want to remember, I'll set up the printout to try and keep it all on as few pages as possible because I personally don't like to have to turn pages If I find I need something different after taking the sheets to a practice, then I come back and add anything I want, or take out what I don't really need. What I often end up with isn't exactly a "fake sheet", but it is my own customized-for-what-I-need sheet.


For my drummer friend who doesn't read music, he just wanted the lyrics and cues, so I used Composer's Chord Chart feature (while "hiding" the chord names) to export the lyrics of the songs. I did have to tidy them up a bit in a text editor, but all the breaks and cues (eg. the "Tenor" as noted above) and such were there, and he was a happy camper.


I hope this helps someone who wants to create a "pragmatic" sheet to get you through a concert


ttfn,
Sherry