beginners question

[milkjam]

chord melody...basically any song with a melody can be played this way right? work out the melody,then find chords that have those melody notes in the high end.thats it is it...basically.but you don`t HAVE to play a chord on every melody note is that right? and apart from that you kind of use the same chord type for a few beats but invert it or extend it or substitute it in order to alter the top note to the melody and / or the bass note to the bass line.
also if i understand correctly this would be a way to "jazzify" just about any song with a good melody.is that it in a nutshell?

[mr. beaumont]

in a nutshell, yes. you can get VERY complicated in your arrangements, but that's the nuts and bolts of it.

in my opinion, the best way to learn 'em is to start doing them. pick an easy song, one with a melody that sits nice on the top two strings for the most part, for starters.

[derek]

Yes, for the most part, you have it. You can make an arrangement dense by using a chord for each melody note, or sparse by using more single notes and fewer chords.

You "jazzify" (great term) a tune by using extended and altered voicings. Just using plain major, minor or dominant voicings will sound, well plain. You can learn arrangements, and there are tons here that Matt, John and others have done, but I agree with Mr.B, you learn so much more by doing your own. Good luck

[frio]

How I teach chord melody to a new student is by harmonizig the C scale by triads then move them harmonizing the same scale with 4 note chords. That way you can get a handle on how the system works. Hope this helps.

[EclecticGuitar]

Originally Posted by frio

How I teach chord melody to a new student is by harmonizig the C scale by triads then move them harmonizing the same scale with 4 note chords. That way you can get a handle on how the system works. Hope this helps.

This is a helpful learning suggestion. Thanks!

[JohnW400]

if you know your chords, the best way is to study what some of the masters have done. There is a ton of stuff out there by Joe Pass. Barry Galbraith is another. Plenty of literature to study.

If I had to name one book and only one that I would use to study chord melody then it wold be the Joe Pass chord solos. They are really 'solos' rather than harmonizing the melody but they give you lot's of things to think about an dwork on.

[hot ford coupe]

Although I'm no great chord melody player, the way I got familiar with all the positions was to play the scales with one chord type first and then by harmonizing all the notes. For example, I would play a C major scale using a C for the root, a Cmaj9 for the 2, a CMaj7 with the 3 in the lead, a C sus4 or C11 with the 4 in the lead and so on. Then I would harmonize the scale with Cmaj7, Dm7, Em7 and so on. This way, I would always have at least 2 chord types to choose from when I played a tune. It helps to make the playing more interesting.