Writing a guitar part

This takes a fresh guitar track through to a verse and chorus that sound like two different sections of the same song. It assumes you have added the track and given it an instrument. What each control does is in the guitar editor page.

Pick the voicing style first

The voicing style is set once for the whole track and it colours every chord in every section, so choose before you do anything else.

Acoustic, folk and country want Open. Electric rhythm, and anything that moves through a lot of keys, wants Barre. Rock, metal and dance want PowerChord.

You can change it later and every section updates at once, so this is not a decision to agonise over.

Start the rhythm from a preset

The rhythm pattern is also track-level: one pattern drives every section unless a section overrides it.

Open the pattern editor and click the preset closest to the feel you want. Play it against a couple of placeholder chords before you touch anything, because a preset that reads wrong on the grid often sounds right.

Then adjust three things, in this order.

Direction. Downstrokes on the beats, upstrokes on the "and" between them. That alternation is what a player's arm does, and it does more for the feel than any other single change.

Velocity. Make beat 1 the loudest hit in the bar and pull the offbeats down, to roughly two-thirds of it. A guitar part with every hit at the same level is the clearest sign of a programmed guitar.

Technique. Add one palm-muted step immediately before a downbeat. That single muted sixteenth creates the push that makes a strum pattern feel played rather than placed.

Build the verse progression

Each section gets its own chord list. Add one chord per change, setting where it starts and how long it lasts.

A four-bar verse might hold Am for bar 1, F for bar 2, then C and G splitting bar 3 between them, and Am again for bar 4. Two full bars, then two half bars, then a bar to land on: the shortened chords in the third bar are what stop four bars sounding like four separate ideas.

The rhythm loops over each chord automatically. You never repeat it by hand.

Build the chorus

Repeat that for the chorus with its own chords. It will use the same rhythm as the verse, which is usually not what you want.

Give the chorus section a strum pattern override: the same shape with denser hits and higher velocities. That keeps everything on one track and leaves the verse alone. Change the track-level pattern instead only if you want every section to move together.

Check it on the fretboard

Play it back and watch the fretboard view. Three problems show up there before you can name them by ear.

A string that never lights is muted, because the voicing could not place a chord note on it. Switch voicing style, or change the chord.

Chords that sound thin usually have a string-group mask doing too much work. High strings only on every hit is bright and hollow.

A chord in the wrong register is a voicing-style question. Try the same progression as Open and as Barre and keep whichever sits better against the bass.

Then the rest of the song

Every section is independent, so a second verse with the same chords is a clone of the first with whatever differs edited. That is faster than building it again and it keeps the two genuinely related.

Add a fill on the last bar of a section that leads somewhere: a quick strum flurry into the chorus is the most useful one, and it takes a single alternate bar.