In this lesson I am trying to give you a few approaches to come up with your own chord melody arrangement for a song. In this first lesson I am not going to go in to a lot of detail with what extra harmony or voice leading you can check out. My focus is more on finding or constructing chords that fit under a melody.
The easiest way to approach this is to use a real song so I decided to make an arrangement of the old Ellington/Strayhorn composition Satin Doll. For those of you who are familiar with jazz forms you will recognize that it is an AABA, which means that we in fact only need to figure out the A part and the B part to play the whole song.
I am not going to try to make a solo guitar arrangement because I find that adding a bassline to the equation makes it techically much more demanding, and limits a lot of other things.
The Guitar Four Chord Songbook G C D Em: Melody/lyrics/chords
To make a chord melody arrangement you need to know the melody, and you need to know the notes of the melody and to be able to move it around on the neck. Your choice of chord may make you want to move position once in a while during the song so being very familiar with the melody is a must. In my experience you mostly have the melody placed on the two top strings so on the B and on the E string, because with those strings it is not too complicated to fit a chord under it, because there is plenty of room for a triad or a drop2 voicing under it. You will also in trying to make arrangements very quickly learn the notes of the fretboard if you don’t know them already.
When you play your arrangement in the end it is important that the melody comes out clearly, since the whole arrangement is in fact playing the melody with some extra (not too important) chord notes. For this you need to be aware that
One way of dealing with the first one is to play with your fingers, that can be handy and later giver you other options in you chord melody arrangements, but it is also possible with a pick. In any case it is good to record yourself playing to check if the melody and arrangement comes across in the way you want it to.
Chord Melody For Guitar
When harmonizing a melody you need to choose where to put the chords rhythmically. By that I mean that you need to decide how many of the notes (and rests) you want to play a chord on. You can harmonize every note, and you can leave out chords for several bars, that’s all fine. For this example I am going to play every chord, but for the rest I am not going to try to harmonize every note of the melody (this is often referred to as block chord arrangements). In basic terms that means putting a chord on the melody note on the 1 and sometimes the 3 of the bar.
If you have found the note of the melody that needs a chord you need to figure out what the note is in relation to the chord, and then try to fit the rest of the chord under it. This can be done in two ways, if you know a voicing for the chord with this top note you can play that, or you can try to construct a voicing under the melody note. If you have a big enough vocabulary of triads, drop2 and drop3 voicings you should not have any trouble finding a good voicing, so let’s look at how it works if you construct the voicing from scratch.
If the melody note is already a 3rd or a 7th this is quite easy since you probably have enough info from just those two notes. Try to play I Should Care or All The Things You Are. If the melody note is not a 3rd or 7th then you should start by finding those two notes on the strings under the melody. That would be something like this example:
Freddie Freeloader By Miles Davis Harmony Harmonized Melody
You might notice that most of the voicings that I end up with are triads. Let’s move the melody to the 1st string so that we have a bit more room for extensions:
This gives us a more practical way to use drop2 voicings in the harmonization and we have a bit more freedom in adding extensions. I am not going to go into what I added where, you can consider that an exercise to figure out, that’s a great exercise for learning what notes are what over a chord.
As you can see in these examples I try to keep the chord voicings close together to let that part of the arrangement ove smoothly. But as you see in bar 5 and 6 I also just jump with the melody when it is moving a lot. This is again a case of the melody being stronger than the chords so it’s fine to move when it moves and try to resolve or choose chords as good as possible.
Jazz Guitar Lessons • Misty • Chord Melody Arrangement • Modal Breakdown, Chord Chart, Vocal Melody, Video Lessons
To give you some stuff to figure out and to make the arrangement complete I’ve given you an arrangement of the B part as well. Besides playing it then try to figure out how you see the chords and how the voicings are connected to the chord.
I hope that you liked the lesson. If you have any questions or comments then feel free to leave them here or on the video. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me via Facebook, Instagram, Google+ or Twitter to keep up to date with new lessons, concerts and releases.In this post you are going to get a step by step breakdown on how to get started playing chord melody guitar – in both a solo jazz guitar context, as well as in a band.
Check out this video for the end result you will be getting out of working through this article on chord melody guitar playing:
Cluster Chords For Guitarist
Don’t have time to read this post now? Handy PDF Download: Get access here to download a print-friendly PDF version of this article including all the lead sheets, chord diagrams, backing tracks and instructions.
This is a huge topic of course, and just one article couldn’t possibly cover all the techniques and concepts of chord melody guitar. So, this post will cover the essentials to quickly get you up and running playing jazz guitar, chord melody style. Let’s get started!
Generally, chord melody guitar refers to playing jazz guitar with single line melodies or solos and combining or accompanying with chords. This is opposed to just single line soloing or melody playing, or on the flipside only comping in a band with chords. You actually combine the two at the same time, on one guitar.
Chords That Sound Like A Beautiful Melody
Getting into the nitty gritty, the term ‘chord melody’ can actually refer to two similar, but nonetheless distinct styles of jazz guitar playing.
On one hand, chord melody can refer to a guitarist mixing chords and melody on a tune in a band setting, e.g a jazz trio of guitar, bass and drums. In this setting, you need to take care in what chord voicings you apply to the melody and your solos. If you play too many low notes on the 5th and 6th strings it can interfere with the bass player.
On the other hand, chord melody guitar playing can also refer to playing jazz tunes arranged or improvised on solo guitar. This is kind of like playing as a one man band: soloist, comping and bass all in one.
Guitar Chord Exercises
To avoid confusion, let’s refer to the setting in a trio or other lineup as a band chord melody, and playing chord melody on your own as jazz guitar solo chord melody.
Now, let’s work through the 5 steps for an awesome chord melody guitar arrangement. As it is a bit easier on the left hand, let’s start with a band chord melody. Then, I’m going to show you how to adapt this version just a little to make an effective jazz guitar solo chord melody.
Although you can turn nearly any tune as a chord melody guitar arrangement, it is helpful to find a chart with a melody that isn’t too fast moving. Bebop tunes in straight eighth notes will be difficult (though not impossible) to arrange. For beginners, ballads or swing/broadway standards should do the trick.
Chord Melody Guitar Arrangements For Jazz Guitar
Here is a list of tunes that work well as chord melody guitar arrangements for solo jazz guitar as well as in a band:
Even non-jazz tunes can work well by substituting standard chords for jazzier alternatives – e.g. check out this post by Matt Warnock on chord melody guitar arrangements of well known Christmas tunes.
Now that we have found a suitable tune, it’s time to learn it just like you would learn any other jazz standard:
Play Like The Greats .com — Melody Gardot
Also, listen to recordings and watch youtube videos of others playing the tune. This is a great way to get
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