Chord Melody Noobie

[haden olmsted]

Hey guys,

So its taken me a while to come around to chord melody styles... but Joe Pass' album Portraits Of Duke Ellington finally made me change my mind...

So now that Iv come around, how do you all start to learn chord melody tunes, and how do you make your own arrangements of them? Iv always had a little trouble doing that myself. Usually I try to make my chords fit around the melody notes, but that isnt always the best, due to my limited knowledge of voicings. Help me out guys. Thanks,
Haden.

[max_power]

Not getting into too much depth here - just going to talk about the basics.

For any given chord, you need to figure out at least one voicing for every note that you want to put on top (the top note will be the melody note). For example, let's take a Cmaj7 chord. The chord tones are C, E, G and B. Each of the four Drop 2 and Drop 3 chord voicings conveniently have one of these notes as the top note, so these chord voicings alone will allow you to play melody notes that are chord tones. As well, they can be played on the top 4, middle 4, or bottom 4 sets of strings, so you have many positions with which to play them (and up to 2 octaves).

In terms of putting the extensions on top, you will need to find voicings for these as well. There are a number of things you can do for this: you can use shell voicings with one or more extensions on top; you can use drop 3s or drop 2s with one of the notes altered; or you can create your own chord shapes that do not fit into any of the categories presented above. Sticking with our example of a Cmaj7 chord, there are four extensions that are most likely to be used in a melody, and they are the 9, 11, #11 and 13. These can all be played by using a shell voicing (i.e. the 3rd and the 7th of the chord at the bottom of the voicing) and playing the extension on top. Alternatively, you can alter a drop 2 or drop 3 voicing. For example, one drop 2 voicing for a Cmaj7 chord is (from bottom to top): BEGC. If you replace the top note, C, with a D, you now have a Cmaj7 voicing that has a D on top. When altering Drop 2s or 3s, keep in mind that you'll almost always want to leave the 3rd and the 7th alone, since those notes define the chord; however, you can freely alter the root and the 5.

I hope that wasn't too confusing. Note that this won't turn you into Joe Pass...however, it's a necessary starting point. You've got to be able to harmonize the notes before you can start adding basslines and improvisation .

[ah.clem]

This is what I am doing for my first arrangement; I have no idea if this is correct or not, but it is working for me (without a teacher).

OK, on re-reading, I'm really sticking my neck out here, but I'm a CM noob too, and this is what I have figured out for myself and I'd tell you over a beer about what I think I'm doing.

Sorry for long post, I just can't seem to be concise.

1. You have to know the neck or you need a chart of the notes on the neck. A clip-on tuner is great for finding a reference note while learning the note positions.

2. Ideally, you can spell all the major, minor, dom, half dim, dim, and augmented chords and extensions; not so ideal, but ok, is knowing how they are formed from the scale intervals so you can figure the spelling out. It is also possible to start on CM (I guess) without knowing this stuff, but man, that seems like a pretty Herculean effort to me. I know some methods don't ask you to do this at first (Conti, for instance) but the trade-off is learning a bunch of chords without really understanding their relationship to each other at first (just my opinion, here). No free ride, either way.

3. Memorize a melody you know inside and out on the first 3 strings, mostly the first 2. Learn it in a bunch of different positions on the neck.

4. Use a fakebook to grab the basic harmonies (start with those, don't worry about subs yet) and then start out by figuring out where you hear a single line melody connecting melody chords and mark the chart in those places (where you hear chords under the melody).

5. Again, IMO, you (generally) need the 1, 3 and 7 (unless you're harmonizing the 6th, then go for an altered/unaltered 9, 11 or 13) of the chord you want to play, which means you need to know the chord tone of the melody note at the point you marked the chart and then build the chord up or down to/from the melody note, using 6th, 9ths (and variations), 11th, etc. depending on what is reachable under the melody note. Don't stress over the 5ths unless it happens to be the melody note, they're pretty disposable (unless altered, then you have to include the 5th in the chord).

6. If something isn't very easy to reach, then try the melody note in a different position on the neck and see if you can get an easier to grab voicing.

7. You are just going for easy to play CM here, nothing fancy. If you hear stuff like walking bass in what you are doing and can start adding it, go for it, but you are just trying to get some stuff down.

8. Solo section - as my major jazz influences are keyboard players like Bill Evans, I plan to lay out my solo section pretty much as above but using my own melody line to connect the changes, probably using some substitutions.

Anyway, this is working (slowly) for me; this is just my opinion.

Good luck with the learning.

[John Link]

Try going to Robert Conti's website and check out the learning materials and DVDs, in my opinion his materials are some of the best I've seen.

[Wilson]

I'm new here. Just finished seven online courses at Berklee. I would like to start putting everything together. Wilson

[matt.guitarteacher]

Originally Posted by John Link

Try going to Robert Conti's website and check out the learning materials and DVDs, in my opinion his materials are some of the best I've seen.

chord melody assembly line is his beginner method. Highly recommended. This one has the basics to get you started. Learn other people's arrangements as well.