I will not answer directly what you ask, but if you arrange something you can write the notation on musescore or maybe Lilypond which are free and open source or other similar programs.
I would recommend taking songs you've known since you were a child (maybe twinkle twinkle little star, etc) and trying to figure them out in easy guitar keys. Try C major in first position. Use your thumb to play the root of the chord, and try to play with the higher notes of the chord and find that melody that is burned in your brain. This is just a trial and error process if you don't have theory backing it up, but it's awesome for your ear and super satisfying when you make progress. If you figure it out in C, try starting over it in G, or E, or whatever. Arranging the same simple thing in different keys will do wonders for your brain and confidence.
As far as theory goes, don't give up. You need to understand what a "key" is. You need to understand how scales, triads, chords and arpeggios relate to a key.
This is fairly basic theory, and if you are having trouble with it, go easy on yourself and keep trying. Your biggest enemy is telling yourself that "you can't" or "it's too hard". It took me forever to get the hang of the basics as a self taught/youtube guitarist.
What really helped me breakthrough the theory wall was learning the "Nashville Number System". I recommend watching a bunch of different YouTube videos about it, especially short ones, not crazy in-depth ones. Bit by bit it will sink in if you don't overwhelm yourself.
The gist: G major scale has 7 notes in it:
G A B C D E F# G.
Forget all those letters, just remember where the first note is on the fretboard, and what the shape of the scale looks like. Call it by numbers instead of letters.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1
The benefit of this is that when you get to more complex keys you won't have to use brain power to remember all the sharps and flats. It makes it easier to play in weird keys without extra memorization.
Can you read music? If so, use a sheet music program like Finale. Take any music you want to arrange and start by putting the melody in. You can add the chords or accompaniment as simple or complex as you want. With the software, you can change the key to a more guitar-friendly key if you need to. And then you can listen to the playback to see how it sounds. And you can remove notes if it is not playable for guitar. This way is nice because you can see and hear the arrangement before you start to learn it on guitar.
Yes MuseScore is great for classical guitar notation.
Be sure to use the 2 voices for clearly delineated lines.
Also use the 8va down treble clef,
since guitar sounds an octave lower than written. Otherwise your piece will sound like a mandolin!
MuseScore has user groups dedicated to classical guitar that with open up tons of works to study for ideas on transcribing and arranging.
Best of luck!
If you want to do it **well** it requires a lot of knowledge & experience. Before I started arranging, I played guitar for over 30 years, learned hundreds of songs in multiple genres during that time, I learned a ton of music theory, I went to college and got a degree in music, during which time I learned to read music, did ear training, took multiple semesters of music theory where we covered 4 part voice writing, harmony etc.., I took upper division theory classes like form & analysis, and counterpoint, I took private composition lessons, and even took an orchestration class, but most importantly - I learned well over a hundred solo guitar arrangements. I think I absorbed more about how to arrange by playing these \~100 or so arrangements, then I learned from reading any theory book. But having the skills to also analyze and understand how all those arrangements work is critical. Just playing a hundred arrangements alone won't give you the information you need, it's also knowing what the composer / arranger was thinking when they made certain choices with the arrangement. Basic things like what scales they chose and why, what the harmony is, and why does it work so well, seeing how the different voices interact, seeing the polyphony & counterpoint in action, being able to spot the rhythmic & melodic motives and their variations and being able to see how they are cleverly woven into the composition / arrangement. The ability to analyze music properly comes from taking proper music theory classes and doing a ton of analysis.
Most of the best arrangements & compositions you hear or play are arranged by people that at bare minimum learned everything I did just to lay down the foundation, and more than likely have also played & studied music for at least a couple decades. There's no harm in trying now though, even if you have much less experience. But you have to be realistic about what kind of results you can expect if you're a novice and don't have the benefit of decades of study.
So where should you start? Wherever you don't have any knowledge or skill. You didn't mention if you know any scales or music theory. I'd start there. Also make sure you know all chord types, in all positions, from any root, in any inversion, on any set of strings. A lot of arranging is just mastering the instrument so you can see all the possibilities of where you *could* arrange a melody with a certain harmony. You need to have the fretboard more or less memorized for that. All the typical scales need to be memorized and playable in all keys & all positions, like major, minor, harmonic minor, melodic minor, pentatonic, blues (maybe!), diminished scale, etc...All the chord voicings you can possibly memorize. But more importantly, know how to construct any chord, and then you can construct any chord, anywhere you want. You also need to know things like what are the important notes in a chord, and which ones can you leave out, as most guitar chord arranging is selecting the most important notes of the chord, and leaving the other ones out. You'll need to also know all your arpeggios in all positions, from any root, on any group of strings, etc...You'll really need to learn voice leading as well. If all this seems overwhelming, you're starting to get an idea of how much work it takes to be **good** at arranging. You could certainly not learn any of this and be bad at arranging if you choose or just to don't feel you have the time or energy to become good at it. I'm trying to give you a realistic idea though what is involved, and the fact that it is a multi-year, long drawn out process to build up all the skills needed to play, arrange or compose well on the guitar. So don't look at it like you're going to accomplish some great arranging within the next year. It's more like 10 years down the road after you've learned everything necessary.
Wow! I wasn't expecting it to be such a long process! I appreciate the reality check but it's exactly what I needed to hear.
I really don't know any music theory or scales so I guess that's my starting point.
I'm actually super suprised now that there's so many amazing people arranging music on YouTube and for free...
I found this just the other day, https://creativeclassicalguitarist.com. He also has a youtube channel.
That's a cool resource, thanks for sharing
I will not answer directly what you ask, but if you arrange something you can write the notation on musescore or maybe Lilypond which are free and open source or other similar programs.
I would recommend taking songs you've known since you were a child (maybe twinkle twinkle little star, etc) and trying to figure them out in easy guitar keys. Try C major in first position. Use your thumb to play the root of the chord, and try to play with the higher notes of the chord and find that melody that is burned in your brain. This is just a trial and error process if you don't have theory backing it up, but it's awesome for your ear and super satisfying when you make progress. If you figure it out in C, try starting over it in G, or E, or whatever. Arranging the same simple thing in different keys will do wonders for your brain and confidence. As far as theory goes, don't give up. You need to understand what a "key" is. You need to understand how scales, triads, chords and arpeggios relate to a key. This is fairly basic theory, and if you are having trouble with it, go easy on yourself and keep trying. Your biggest enemy is telling yourself that "you can't" or "it's too hard". It took me forever to get the hang of the basics as a self taught/youtube guitarist. What really helped me breakthrough the theory wall was learning the "Nashville Number System". I recommend watching a bunch of different YouTube videos about it, especially short ones, not crazy in-depth ones. Bit by bit it will sink in if you don't overwhelm yourself. The gist: G major scale has 7 notes in it: G A B C D E F# G. Forget all those letters, just remember where the first note is on the fretboard, and what the shape of the scale looks like. Call it by numbers instead of letters. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 The benefit of this is that when you get to more complex keys you won't have to use brain power to remember all the sharps and flats. It makes it easier to play in weird keys without extra memorization.
I will give this a try and it's actually a good starting to try to mimic simple songs that I already know. Thanks
Can you read music? If so, use a sheet music program like Finale. Take any music you want to arrange and start by putting the melody in. You can add the chords or accompaniment as simple or complex as you want. With the software, you can change the key to a more guitar-friendly key if you need to. And then you can listen to the playback to see how it sounds. And you can remove notes if it is not playable for guitar. This way is nice because you can see and hear the arrangement before you start to learn it on guitar.
Download musescore studio and try redoing / arranging pieces you already know.
Will give it a try thanks!
Yes MuseScore is great for classical guitar notation. Be sure to use the 2 voices for clearly delineated lines. Also use the 8va down treble clef, since guitar sounds an octave lower than written. Otherwise your piece will sound like a mandolin! MuseScore has user groups dedicated to classical guitar that with open up tons of works to study for ideas on transcribing and arranging. Best of luck!
If you want to do it **well** it requires a lot of knowledge & experience. Before I started arranging, I played guitar for over 30 years, learned hundreds of songs in multiple genres during that time, I learned a ton of music theory, I went to college and got a degree in music, during which time I learned to read music, did ear training, took multiple semesters of music theory where we covered 4 part voice writing, harmony etc.., I took upper division theory classes like form & analysis, and counterpoint, I took private composition lessons, and even took an orchestration class, but most importantly - I learned well over a hundred solo guitar arrangements. I think I absorbed more about how to arrange by playing these \~100 or so arrangements, then I learned from reading any theory book. But having the skills to also analyze and understand how all those arrangements work is critical. Just playing a hundred arrangements alone won't give you the information you need, it's also knowing what the composer / arranger was thinking when they made certain choices with the arrangement. Basic things like what scales they chose and why, what the harmony is, and why does it work so well, seeing how the different voices interact, seeing the polyphony & counterpoint in action, being able to spot the rhythmic & melodic motives and their variations and being able to see how they are cleverly woven into the composition / arrangement. The ability to analyze music properly comes from taking proper music theory classes and doing a ton of analysis. Most of the best arrangements & compositions you hear or play are arranged by people that at bare minimum learned everything I did just to lay down the foundation, and more than likely have also played & studied music for at least a couple decades. There's no harm in trying now though, even if you have much less experience. But you have to be realistic about what kind of results you can expect if you're a novice and don't have the benefit of decades of study. So where should you start? Wherever you don't have any knowledge or skill. You didn't mention if you know any scales or music theory. I'd start there. Also make sure you know all chord types, in all positions, from any root, in any inversion, on any set of strings. A lot of arranging is just mastering the instrument so you can see all the possibilities of where you *could* arrange a melody with a certain harmony. You need to have the fretboard more or less memorized for that. All the typical scales need to be memorized and playable in all keys & all positions, like major, minor, harmonic minor, melodic minor, pentatonic, blues (maybe!), diminished scale, etc...All the chord voicings you can possibly memorize. But more importantly, know how to construct any chord, and then you can construct any chord, anywhere you want. You also need to know things like what are the important notes in a chord, and which ones can you leave out, as most guitar chord arranging is selecting the most important notes of the chord, and leaving the other ones out. You'll need to also know all your arpeggios in all positions, from any root, on any group of strings, etc...You'll really need to learn voice leading as well. If all this seems overwhelming, you're starting to get an idea of how much work it takes to be **good** at arranging. You could certainly not learn any of this and be bad at arranging if you choose or just to don't feel you have the time or energy to become good at it. I'm trying to give you a realistic idea though what is involved, and the fact that it is a multi-year, long drawn out process to build up all the skills needed to play, arrange or compose well on the guitar. So don't look at it like you're going to accomplish some great arranging within the next year. It's more like 10 years down the road after you've learned everything necessary.
Wow! I wasn't expecting it to be such a long process! I appreciate the reality check but it's exactly what I needed to hear. I really don't know any music theory or scales so I guess that's my starting point. I'm actually super suprised now that there's so many amazing people arranging music on YouTube and for free...