“Pacific Rain” Arranged for Harp Guitar, Part 1

“Pacific Rain” is a piece written by Martin Cilia, and performed by a full band.

Martin is a great surf guitarist, and Pacific Rain is very much in the surf guitar tradition.

Martin suggested I might like to try arranging it for solo guitar. When arranging a piece to play in this style, I often listen to the original several times to try and better understand the intent of the piece, and also how the various instruments work together as it is performed. Sometimes I will attempt to recreate the band performance the best I can for just my guitar; melody, bass lines, and chords all being played together. I used to also try and add some percussive hits to the guitar until one night I was leaving the stage and saw the damage I had done to the top of my Maton by doing this.

And that was the last night I did so!

Songs I have arranged in this manner include “I Saw Her Standing There”, “Penny Lane”, and “Video Killed the Radio Star”.

Other songs will arranged more in the style of a solo pianist playing through block chords and a melody being added on top. This can be as simple or as complex as one likes. or is able to imagine. I have arranged “Happy Birthday” in this style; heavily influenced by the great Joe Pass with his approach, but also by Ike Isaacs, a former teacher of mine.

In working up an arrangement of Martin’s tune, I began as I typically would with listening to the tune several times in a row.

The semitone movement between the A and Bb chords had me considering how to best navigate this. The A chord is no problem. The open 5th string allows for more flexibility in chord voicings up the neck. The Bb does not. So that is the first thing to consider. How can I voice these chords to best present the song on solo guitar?

Melody is king! And this will always dictate how the rest of the arrangement will be put together.

As I thought through this challenge, I came up with the idea that DADGAD might be a better tuning. It will allow for greater flexibility and physical distance on the guitar, as well as making it easier to select other notes to colour the original chord – or completely rearrange the chords for this song. For example, I am thinking of reharmonising the Bb to a Bb6 add #11 chord for more interest.

I went a step further and considered my harp guitar as a possible instrument for this tune. The flexibility offered by the sub bass strings could really make a difference. And to top it off, I added the spider capo to the second fret on strings 1 and 2. A Spider Capo allows one to capo individual strings whilst leaving others open.

How to notate this for publication? I regularly use Dorico and Guitar Pro 8 for such things, but there is no harp guitar template that I am aware of in either. So I turned to Guitar Pro 8 to see if I could make a a template for such an instrument. Choosing a regular guitar and then bass stave seemed to be okay. I may find something better as I work through this.

And me being me, as I put the melody with a bass line, felt I needed something “extra”. So I have used my Spider Capo to achieve this, simply by adding a capo to fret 2 across strings 1 and 2.

So far, so good.

So the main thing I have been considering throughout the process is how to get the melody to “sing” in certain places in the tune. Acoustic players are very limited when it comes to how long a note will be when held, dynamic range, and playability. The use of the Spider Capo will allow for me to employ some open strings, which will create a harp-like texture when playing the melody by letting notes ring out against one another. I think I first learnt this from hearing Chet Atkins arrange and play tunes. Both Tommy Emmanuel and Doyle Dykes use this technique all the time.

The sub bass strings are D, C, Bb, A, G, and E, which is not a tuning I have tried, but it works for me.

So for now we shall leave this with an initial attempt to lay out the song and thinking through the challenge of such things.

It is a very ‘bare bones” arrangement now, but that will be added to the piece as we work and develop more ideas.

More soon!