Why do modern popular songs composed on piano sound different than songs composed on guitar?

Question

Songs that I hear that are piano based - ie. **composed and originally performed on piano**, seem to have a different feel than those composed on guitar. The flow, the movement, the chords used - are often very different for piano based songs vs. guitar based songs. I don't mean which instrument they are **played** on. Any song can be played on either instrument. I am referring to which instrument was used by the composer, to compose or write the music. I am also **not** referring to a situation where someone takes a song, and composes an arrangement for one instrument or the other. I find many songs written on piano, are more difficult to translate to an arrangement for guitar and maintain the same feel as the original played on piano. This is the source of my conclusion that there is something organically different between the two instruments as it applies to the way songs evolve from them. I compose all of my original music on guitar because I am more proficient on that instrument. But I am wondering if I might get some interesting variations in my melodies and progressions if I started to compose some of my music on piano. And I wonder **if some ideas or emotions that I want to convey lyrically, can be conveyed more effectively musically, on piano** than on guitar. What are some of the reasons that a song would manifest or evolve differently if composed on piano than if composed on guitar? And what type themes or ideas suggested by the lyrical content of a song (in the country, folk, pop, or rock genre') might be more effectively conveyed on piano than guitar? **EDIT:** note addition of questions about how each instrument might better convey lyrical concepts musically.

Answer 1

Music written when thinking in the feel and vocabulary of a certain instrument will likely be influenced in some way by that instruments. If piano is that instrument, perhaps the musician might include some arpeggios that run up and down the keyboard, in a way that the guitar cannot do so readily if at all. If guitar is the inspiring instrument, perhaps the piece might include some dramatic Spanish inspired strums, sometimes referred to as rasqueados, that the piano imitate but could never completely produce the sound of a guitarist.

Answer 2

Like he said above. Also the "home key" for a piano or keyboard is the key of C. The "home key" of a guitar is the key of E. Even though the same melody can be played in the same key by both instruments, the timbre of the instruments is different, mainly because the guitar is a stringed instrument, and even though a piano has strings, it is a percussion instrument, the hammers hitting the strings rather than plucking or strumming the strings, which in a paino is pretty impossible due to the size of the strings.

Answer 3

I think the difference you're noticing simply has to do with the physical, mechanical differences between how the two instruments are played. Guitars are strummed or plucked (picked); piano keys are pressed down. Because of this, certain musical gestures that are simple and thus idiomatic on one are impossible or sound unnatural on the other. Fast repeated chords, for instance, are much easier (and sound better) on the guitar than on the piano. There are also differences in the envelopes of the two sounds: the onset and decay of the volume of the notes are different. (It's also possible to play 10 notes at once on a piano, vs. 6 for the guitar, of course.)

So if you are getting some of your musical ideas from your interaction with your instrument during the composing process, as many of us do, you'll be getting different feedback from different instruments. (To truly break yourself out of a rut, try composing on autoharp or organ!)

Whether there are lyrical ideas that are better suited to writing on one instrument than another I'm afraid is too individual a trait to be able to give an individual answer. Songs about lost love might be better on piano for you, but better on guitar for me.