Best songs to get started with chord melody

[rlrhett]

I have the Conti books, too. You can see the thread I started. It is easy to see THAT he chooses to harmonize using the cycle of fourths, a tri-tone sub, or diatonic chords, just not WHY.

I am also enrolled in Martin Taylor's online course. If I'm to be honest, it was too advanced for me. He really assumes you already are fairly competent at creating chord melodies.

All that preamble to say I did get one nugget from Martin Taylor that is giving me a little help. He suggests that you just create the bass line above the melody. THEN fill in the middle voice(s).

It has made trial and error application of the harmonic devices Conti teaches a little less painful. Just playing a couple of bass note possibilities over the melody makes it easier to hear.

Also, use a melody you REALLY know. I found Conti's arrangement of "Aura Lee" much easier to understand than a jazz standard I didn't really know that well. After all, who doesn't know "Love me tender, love me true..."

Final note, although I've been an avid amateur guitarist for 30 years, my recent foray into jazz has demonstrated to me that I am a terrible musician. So take my suggestions with that in mind.


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[ellisson]

1. How High the Moon
2. Speak Low
3. Here's that Rainy Day
4. Autumn Leaves
5. Satin Doll

[Cunamara]

Learn the melody down pat, first and foremost. Be able to play it on the top string, the second string, the top two strings. Then, look to see what the note is related to the chord of the moment- e.g., a 3rd, a 5th, etc.- that will lead you to select your chord voicing. Once you've got the melody on top of the chords, then you can build some connecting bass lines. After you do a half-dozen or so of these, you will develop some intuitive feel for how it works.

One of the current best chord melody players is Gene Bertoncini. Listen to him and check out his books and instructional video.

[artcore]

I started out just working through books of arrangements.....Bob Yelin ....and stuff off the net....that's the best way....see what these guys are doing.....go slow......at the same time learn the drop cords and triads.....then at some point you can do what is suggested above.......so much available these days.......Its a process

[matt.guitarteacher]

I started out just working through books of arrangements.....Bob Yelin ....and stuff off the net....that's the best way

not for me, but everyone's different, I suppose. I learned much more from arranging my own.

[alltunes]

I've been hacking away at chord melody for a couple of years. Some things that I try and adhere to...much has been mentioned above.

1) Play songs you like...melodies that "speak to you"

2) Learn the melody in many different fret board positions.

3) Learn the chords

4) learn one song until you know it inside and out (Bill Frisell)

5) if you memorize someone's arrangement you can De-rail quickly..rather learn to mix and match different
arrangements and most importantly come up with your own by learning the techniques and strategies of chord melody

So I have three maybe four tunes I've been working on for quite a while and I keep trying to make them better. Rather
then go on to the next "half-finished" chord melody project.

Recently purchased Barry Greene's Mike's Master Class where he develops My Romance and I found it to be be very
informative.

I have purchased many chord melody books but one I really like is John Stein's chord melody book. I also an awaiting Barry Greene's book on the subject.

[TommyCorsica2]

Beauty of the Conti method - if you've really got it down -- is you can decide when to use what chords and how many notes of the chord. Obviously, if the tune swings, you won't have time to lay down tons of chords under the melody.

But the melody of really ANY song is so strong that the underlying harmony can be pretty loose and re-harmonized in many ways (using diatonic subs, using minor third movement and using cycle of of 4ths "backcycling".)

From your fake books, use the chord chart to each song as a guide and figure out which of Conti's moveable chord forms will give you the written melody note(s) on top. Conti provides written chord forms that give every single possible melody note (12 tones) atop any given chord "flavor": Major, minor, dominant, half-diminished, diminished and augmented.

[sundogg52]

I would suggest ANY song that you can sing the melody in your head, it doesn't have to be a "jazz" tune. If you are very familiar with the melody line then start finding the chords and inversions of the chart that have the melody notes on top (on the higher strings) and start building from there. I would start with something with fewer rather than more chord changes. This will also encourage you to hunt out chord variations, chord substitutes and inversions. The other thing is LISTEN, listen to the great players. Some of my favorite chord melody players are Joe Pass, Martin Taylor, Earl Klugh, Johnny Smith, there are dozens.

[TommyCorsica2]

Cannot overstate the importance of arranging your own chord melodies.

I've borrowed some neat voicings and endings from Yellin and other written chord melody pieces, but memorizing someone else's arrangements was a dead end for me.

I suppose one could memorize an arrangement and say "Hey, I see what they did there and I can employ the same trick over here." But then you'd have to know what you're looking at -- or looking for -- and if you're already that familiar with various harmonic tricks, then why memorize someone else's?

By working through songs on my own -- WITHOUT TABLATURE -- I make my own choices and immediately HEAR how those choices/flavors support the melody. And after I learned the fist few songs this way, the whole chord-melody thing got much easier, more efficient and bolder. This week I added "Moment's Notice" to the repertoire.

[asafasadi]

I agree with you matt,
the best way to learn that kind of stuff it's to write your own.
Another useful approach is to comp the song following the theme (using a recording of a piano less trio) and start from there.
Also when writing your own arrangement is useful to actually write down some stuff in order to understand where to put the melody or when you need to create complex rhythms with the bass.

[fasstrack]

Try a pop tune with a good, easy melody and interesting but simple changes. A Beatles song maybe?

There are all kinds of tab posting on the Webosphere, but I agree it's way better to cop it and write it out yourself.

Then get it down and record yourself playing it, so you can hear it and progress...