Chrono Cross - A Light For Lost Hopes

auriplane

Joined: Sep 06 2008

Play your tab on guitar while you listen. You can slow the song down with a program such as Audacity or Transcribe, if it's too fast. (Kabukibear recommended Transcribe in his arranging tutorial, which you might want to read! But I haven't used Transcribe myself.) Take your time and try to get each note right. Your arrangement doesn't have to sound like the original, but I'd recommend trying to get the original notes correct first, so your arrangement is on purpose and not accidental :-)

Your melody starts out like this:

E||-----------5--4----------|
B||-----2--4--------4----2--|
G||-------------------------|
D||-------------------------|
A||-------------------------|
E||-------------------------|

But those first two notes aren't right. It actually goes like this:

E||-----------5--4----------|
B||-----4--5--------4----2--|
G||-------------------------|
D||-------------------------|
A||-------------------------|
E||-------------------------|

Try playing the 2 4 along with the song on your guitar, and then try playing 4 5. When you play 2 4, it doesn't sound as good. Why? Listen for the clash between your guitar and the original song. That's how you check for wrong notes.

Okay, maybe you'll want to use 2 4 in your tab on purpose when we're done transcribing, and arranging. But for now, let's try to get the original notes, since things are clearly not right yet, so let's write down 4 5 for now, and move on to the second guitar.

auriplane

Joined: Sep 06 2008

Now measures 1 and 2 both sound like the original. But we've got a problem. Measure 2 is leaking into measure 3! The first phrase of the song is 17 eighth notes long, instead of 16. So, what SHOULD begin at the start of measure 3 begins one eight note late!

This happens again in measure 5. The second phrase is also 17 eighth notes long, instead of 16. By measure five this has added up to us being a quarter note off!

Let's fix this. Right now, it looks like this:

So what if we delete that extra eighth note sticking out in the next measure? Won't it sound bad? Yes, and your ear is RIGHT to say the song should linger there. You're not wrong. You're just wrong about how to write it. In this case, we can make it sound the SAME by writing it this way:

And now measure 3 isn't late anymore! This is important. Measures should start on the right beat, or you'll confuse the guitarist reading your music! The accent naturally falls on the 1 here, and you have the 1 wrong.

Also note, measures 3 and 4 look just like measures 1 and 2 now.

auriplane

Joined: Sep 06 2008

Okay, I went ahead and transcribed the rest:

A Light for Lost Hopes (transcription)

Now, with the original notes written down, you can do some "arranging" if you like. I can't really tell you how to do this, though you might want to check out Kabukibear's tutorial. The original song, in this case, is meant to be played on a single classical guitar, from the sound of it. It could be arranged for one guitar! Even on a single guitar, though, you have two separate *voices*, and while you don't have to keep them separate all the time, you should be aware of what you are doing and only do it on purpose *when it sounds good*, never on accident or without realizing it.

Let's look at your original tab and back to this one. For the second chord, instead of B major like the original song, you continued the first chord (C# minor) all the way through the first measure. Like that better? Great, change it! I'm not telling you how to make your arrangement. I just want to make sure you do things like that on purpose because they sound better, and not simply because you heard it wrong. That's why getting a transcription as a first step is so important!

Let's continue. Measure 3 is like measure 1, and measures 2 and 4 in your arrangement already sound like the original. In measures 5 and 6, you changed the ascending line on the first guitar significantly. You can do that, but in this case, you have to figure out somewhere new to take the song--and the place you went to sounds like a mistake. So, you should either keep the original part here, or come up with something new. This doesn't sound right.

Let's take a quick look at your original tab again, for measures 7 and 8.

Here, it looks like you gave up. Every tied note here is a mistake. There's no reason for that 4 to be tied. You have no reason to split a quarter note into a dotted eighth and sixteenth tied together. The last chord is just a whole note, not a bunch of noted tied together. Well, that's okay. After measure 5 took you to the wrong place, you had nowhere to go. So I'd get frustrated too! But you definitely need to fix that in your final arrangement.

In measure 8, you have 44644x and 00222x together. That's pretty dissonant! The original only has one chord playing at the end, and of course you can change that in your arrangement, but I'd keep the C# in the root--it's the tonal center, as I mentioned in my first reply, and you want it to be the bass note of the final chord to give the song a "grounded" feeling.

Ennea

humhum..

Location: Germany

Joined: Apr 09 2010

awesome! i just expected some small piece of advice but you made your answer very detailled, thank you :-) alright than, I will look up kabukis (way too long) arranging tutorial and see what i can make of it.. got some learning to do ;)

thanks again!