Chord Melody
A chord melody is a way of arranging a song so that a single guitar does all the work providing melody and harmony, and usually a bass part as well.
These mini-lessons for guitar are short guides to help you understand basic music concepts, guitar techniques and other topics that occur frequently in your day to day guitar playing. The idea is to give you a quick refresher should you happen to need it on any given topic.
A chord melody is a way of arranging a song so that a single guitar does all the work providing melody and harmony, and usually a bass part as well.
Knowing how songs are structured can help you with learning songs and with communicating with other musicians. Here’s a brief run down of the basic parts of songs.
Alternate tuning involves changing any or all of a guitar’s strings to a different note than in standard tuning. “Drop D” and DADGAD tunings are frequent choices of alternate tuning but there are many to choose from.
In open tuning, the guitar’s six strings are tuned to the notes of a single, easily identified chord. Open tuning is used a lot by slide guitar players. It’s also a favorite of Keith Richards.
Standard tuning is tuning each string of your guitar to a specific note. It makes learning the guitar easier by allowing you to play the various chords in the same way that other people do.
The melody of a song is what we carry around in our heads. Along with harmony and rhythm, melody is one of the three essential elements of any song.
The Circle of Fifths can be a very useful tool for guitarist for things from learning the fretboard to making highly educated guesses about upcoming chords in a progression.
Knowing the basic structure of the twelve bar blues will help you immensely as both a guitarist and a musician, particularly if you want to play and jam with other musicians. Here’s a guide to explain how it works.