The Complete Guide to Chord Melody

The Complete Guide to Chord Melody | MATT WARNOCK GUITAR

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The Complete Guide to Chord Melody Chord melody playing is one of the most popular topics of study with Jazz guitarists, and for good reason. Being able to play chords, bass notes, licks, and other items over a melody line can lift any Jazz standard from the mundane to new levels of excitement in your playing. Though you may love to listen to the great chord melody and solo guitar players, such as Joe Pass, Ted Greene, and Ed Bickert, it may seem like learning to play chord melody is out of your reach. This isn’t the case. By studying the arrangements and concepts in this lesson, you’ll not only expand your chord melody repertoire, but also learn how to build your own chord melodies. Which is a very cool thing to be able to do. In this lesson, you’ll study chord melody and solo guitar arrangements of the Jazz standard After You’ve gone, which is in the public domain. More importantly, extract the concepts and techniques from this lesson and apply them to other chord melody tunes you’re working on in the practice room.

This way you not only learn these arrangements, but you build the skills needed to create your own chord melodies.

Now, enough talking, time to play!

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Contents (Click to Jump to a Section) What is a Chord Melody Chord Melody – Step by Step Chord Melody Arrangement Solo Guitar Arrangement Chord Melody Substitutions Solo Guitar Substitutions Joe Pass Chord Melody Style Bassline Chord Melody – Ted Greene

What is a Chord Melody To begin, let’s take a minute to define the term chord melody so that you understand how it’s used in the context of this lesson. In conversation, the term chord melody can refer to both group and solo guitar arrangements. But, to make things clearer, those two approaches will have their own definition in this lesson. You’ll learn more about that comparison below. For now, let’s define a chord melody.

A chord melody arrangement is built by harmonizing a melody line by adding chords, double stops, octaves, bass line, or other harmonic devices below that line.

It sounds so simple when you put it on paper. If only it were that simple to apply to the fretboard! Now, let’s take a look at a chord melody in action as you compare four bars of single notes to four bars of chord melody. Here’s the first four bars to After You’ve Gone written out as a single note melody.

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Click to hear VmP

Now, here’s that same melody line played in a chord melody arrangement.

Click to hear VmP

The difference is pretty easy to hear. One is played in a single-line approach, and the other is that same line harmonized by adding chords underneath the melody line. As you progress through the material in this lesson, you’ll learn how to harmonize melody lines, as well as explore variations to this technique that will expand both your chord melody and solo guitar arrangements. Besides knowing how to define a chord melody, it’s also important to know the difference between chord melody and solo guitar playing, which you’ll explore in the next section.

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Chord Melody vs. Solo Guitar

As you just learned, it’s important to understand how chord melody and solo guitar arrangements compare before studying them in the practice room.

Both of these approaches share similar outlines and approaches, which is why they’re sometimes referred to as the same thing in conversion.

But, there are some fundamental differences between chord melody and solo guitar playing that will make learning these two styles of guitar playing easier in your practicing. To begin this comparison, here are a number of characteristic elements of chord melody playing to note.

Played with a small group – duo, trio, quartet, etc. Uses smaller chord shapes, often without the root included Adheres to the form of the tune directly Keeps in time with the band and count in Used to replace the single-note head, then leads into the solo sections

Now, here are the elements that characterize solo guitar playing and arranging.

Played in a solo guitar situation, no band Uses more root-based and larger chord shapes The form becomes flexible for interpretation Time and tempo are at the discretion of the performer Can be played as a stand alone song, or as the intro to a combo version

As you can see, though both of these approaches involve harmonizing a melody line, they use different musical approaches, and are played in different musical situations. Understanding these differences will help you decide on the right approach for your next chord melody or solo guitar arrangement. Now that you have an understanding of these two approaches, it’s time look at how to prepare a tune for a chord melody or solo guitar arrangement.

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Chord Melody – Step by Step While putting together a chord melody isn’t as easy as putting together Ikea furniture, if that’s even easy, there are steps you can take to make this process easier to accomplish. In this section, you’ll learn 4 steps that you can use to help you organize your chord melody practice routine. By following these steps, you’ll provide yourself with the direction and focus you need to arrange any Jazz standard for chord melody or solo guitar performance. Now, it will take some time to get this process down in your studies. So, if you’re new to chord melody, or Jazz guitar, and these steps seem out of your reach for now, not to worry. Read about these steps, and make notes of what you don’t understand quite yet. Then, learn the arrangements below and read about how they’re built. After that, come back and see if these 4 steps are clearer. From there, with a bit of elbow grease, you’ll be ready to arrange chord melodies on your own.

Step 1 -Choosing a Key

The first preparatory item you’ll need to decide upon is the key you’ll use for your chord melody or solo guitar arrangement. Changing the key of a standard is more applicable to a solo guitar version, where you have the freedom to move around more in your performance. But, if a melody line is too high or too low in a certain key to build a chord melody, feel free to change the key for that tune to make it easier. You’ll see an example of this approach in the Joe Pass solo guitar version below. After you’ve picked a key, you’re ready to set up the melody line for your arrangement.

Step 2 – Melody on Top 2 Strings

The next thing you’ll need to do is take the melody line to the top two strings, only using the

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third string when necessary. Doing so will provide you the space you need to add chords below the melody line in your arrangement. To see how this works, check out this phrase from After You’ve Gone in the original lead sheet octave.

Click to hear VmP

You’ll note that there’s not much room to play with when adding chords below that melody line. Here’s that same phrase up an octave, on the top two strings as a comparison.

Click to hear VmP

Much better right? So, before moving on to any of the chord melody arrangements in this lesson, take a minute

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and learn to play the melody to After You’ve Gone on the top two strings. This’ll give you a sense of the melody line before exploring the chord melodies below. As well, it’ll show you how to be flexible with a melody line in your chord melodies.

When working through the arrangements below, you’ll notice that notes get moved around to fit different chords and bass notes on the guitar.

So, when working out the melody on the top two strings, don’t think of that as dogma as far as the fingering. Be flexible, and don’t be afraid to take a note you played on the second string and move it to the first string if needed.

After You’ve Gone Backing Track VmP

Click to hear VmP

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Step 3 – Picking Hand Choices

The next choice you’ll have to make in preparation for a chord melody is which picking technique you’ll use to play the arrangement. Here are the three choices for picking when it comes to chord melody and solo guitar playing.

Pick Only Fingerpicking Only Hybrid Picking (Fingers and Pick

If you choose picking only, you’ll nail the single notes, but might have trouble with certain chords or bass line phrases. Fingerpicking is great for chords and basslines, but lags behind on single-notes with most players. Lastly, hybrid picking tends to be the best of both worlds, but can take some time getting used to in your playing. No matter which option you choose, there are pros and cons to work through in the woodshed. So, try each of these picking hand variations out and see which one suits your playing style the best. From there, you can stick with that picking approach, or use it most of the time with the others coming into play when the situations calls for it.

Step 4 – Adding Chords to the Melody

Now comes the tough part, adding chords on top of the melody line. As you’ll see in the arrangements in this lesson, you can choose to harmonize some or all of the notes in a chord melody. When doing so, the best way to find the right chord for a melody note is to identify the interval of the melody note.

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From there, you find a chord shape you know that has that interval at the top

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note, and that’s the chord you use over that melody note.

For example, if the melody note is A, and the chord is F7, you play an F7 chord with the 3rd on top, such as a root position Drop 2 chord. If you need a refresher on voicings and inversions, check out these Jazz guitar chord lessons. Each of these lessons has the notes written out as intervals on the fretboard, which will be very helpful for your chord melody study.

Jazz Guitar Chords – The Ultimate Guide Drop 2 Chords for Guitar Drop 3 Chords for Guitar Drop 2 & 4 Chords for Guitar

After you’ve put the chords under each melody note, or as many melody notes as you feel is sufficient for your arrangement, you’re ready to play your chord melody. With these steps in mind, you could now take a standard and come up with your own arrangement, or move on to learn the sample arrangements in the lesson below.

Chord Melody Arrangement Now that you’ve studied chord melody and solo guitar arrangements on paper, it’s time to take that knowledge to the fretboard. Here’s a chord melody version of After You’ve Gone that you can learn, both with a metronome and over the backing track, in your studies. As you work on this arrangement, make notes of any elements that stand out to you. It might be a chord voicing you like, or a right-hand technique that grabs your ears, circle those notes on the page or make a note of them for further study. Lastly, as is the case with any arrangement in this lesson, chord melody or otherwise, the music on the page is a starting point, not an ending point. Because of this, you’ll hear slight variations in the audio examples throughout this lesson. These could be slides added in, picking-hand variation, and other guitar techniques applied to the written chord melody.

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Take this approach in your own chord melody and solo guitar playing.

Treat the arrangements like lead sheets. Learn the notes on the page, and then add in your own interpretation of those notes.

This will help you learn chord melody concepts, and bring a personal touch to any arrangement you study in the woodshed.


Click to hear VmP

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Solo Guitar Arrangement After learning the chord melody for After You’ve Gone, you can now explore a solo guitar version of this tune in your studies. As you learned earlier, you’ll now have more of a focus on lower bass notes in this version.

And you have more freedom to explore phrasing and pauses in this arrangement.

In the audio, you’ll hear one approach to the phrasing of this solo guitar standard. But, don’t let that be the only approach to the tune that you work on. Instead, learn the version below as is. Then, come up with your own way of phrasing, slowing down, speeding up, and adding pauses to the arrangement. With the freedom that solo guitar allows, it’s these musical choices that makes any chord melody personalized in your playing.

Click to hear VmP

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Chord Melody With Substitutions Now that you’ve worked out a combo and solo guitar version of After You’ve gone, you’re ready to apply a few chord substitutions to this Jazz standard.

When playing chord melodies, you can use many of the same chord subs that you would use when comping or soloing over that same tune.

In this arrangement, you’ll study three main chord substitutions that you can take out of this context and add to your own chord melody arrangements. You’ll notice that none of these subs steps too far outside the given key, but that they add new interest to the arrangement compared to only using diatonic chords. Chord subs don’t have to be highly chromatic to be effective, they just need to be musical and applied to the right moment for that sub to work.

Secondary Dominant Chords

With these chord subs, you’re replacing a diatonic chord with the V7 of the next chord in the tune. An example of this would be if you had a Cm7 to F7 progression and you replace Cm7 with C7.

This creates a V7/V7 to V7 progression, commonly called a secondary dominant, as it’s the dominant 7th of another chord besides the tonic in that key.

As well, this could also mean seeing C7 for a bar, and moving between C7 and G7 over that measure. This creates the same secondary dominant sound, but this time over a static chord rather than a chord progression. Adding secondary dominants to your playing is an effective way to spice up a chord melody

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arrangement. It can be overdone, so be careful, but it can also create interest in tunes with repetitive ii V and ii V I progressions as you alter those in each chorus of chord melody.

Secondary ii V Chords

You won’t see this approach in the chord melody arrangement below, but it will show up in the Joe Pass version of After You’ve Gone in a lower section. This an extension of the secondary dominant substitution, only now you insert a ii V instead of only the V7 chord in your chord melodies. To do so, when playing Cm7 to F7, you can now play, Gm7 C7 to F7. This replaces the Cm7 chord with a secondary dominant chord, C7, and it’s related iim7 chord, Gm7. As well, you can use this approach over a static chord in your playing. As you added C7-G7-C7 over a static C7 chord, you can also play C7-Dm7 G7-C7, to create a secondary ii V progression. Because the iim7 and V7 chords are so closely related, you can use them as a combo, or one at a time, when using them in a chord substitution situation.

Dim7 as 7b9 Chords

The final chord substitution used in this lesson is playing a dim7 chord over a 7th chord, which implies a 7b9 sound over that change. This was a favorite Wes Montgomery chord technique, especially when paired up with secondary dominants, among other great players.

Whenever you see a 7th chord in a tune, you can play a dim7 chord from the b9 of that change.

This turns that 7th chord in a rootless 7b9 chord shape.

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Not only does this bring a new harmonic color into your playing, but it gives you some tension to play with over that chord change. The important part is then resolving that tension so that it sounds musical and not like a mistake in your chord melody.

Now that you’ve learned about the theory behind these concepts, it’s time to hear and play them in a musical situation. As you go through the following chord melody study, notice how the chord subs alter the sound of the tune as compared to the version you learned earlier. It’s not a drastic change, but one that brings new interest into the arrangement.


Click to hear VmP

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Solo Guitar With Substitutions You can now add chord substitutions to a solo guitar version of After You’ve gone. When doing so, you’ll use the same concepts that you explored in the chord melody version above. But, you now have more of a focus on the bass movement, and freedom to play with the time and phrasing with this approach.

As you’re playing more bass notes in your chords during a solo version vs. a combo version, the bassline becomes more important when choosing chord substitutions.

Not only can you choose subs based on their sound quality and harmonic effect, but on the bass movement they create as well. Adding in different diatonic and chromatic chords is not only an effective way to create harmonic interest in your chord melodies; it will allow you to bring a bigger sense of melody to the bassline as well. After you’ve learned this arrangement, apply substitutions to any solo guitar standard you’re working on in the practice room to use this concept in your own playing.

Click to hear VmP

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Joe Pass Chord Melody Style Any study of chord melody wouldn’t be complete without looking at playing style of the most recognized solo Jazz guitarist, Joe Pass. Joe turned the Jazz guitar world upside down with his Virtuoso recordings, and many fans and players still consider them to be the pinnacle of solo Jazz guitar. To help you bring a bit of the Joe Pass solo guitar style to your own chord melody repertoire, here’s a Joe Pass style arrangement and breakdown of the concepts used in that study.

Musical Textures

The first Joe Pass solo concept is an often-overlooked one, compared to the technical items, and that’s Joe’s use of textures. When listening to a Joe Pass solo performance, you’ll notice that he mixes together full chords, broken chords, arpeggios, scales, octaves, Blues riffs, etc. as he navigates even one tune. In the example below, you’ll see many of these textural variations applied to After You’ve Gone. As you go through the study, don’t just make note of chord choice and single-note runs. Keep an eye out for the different textures used in this arrangement to get your ears in tune with recognizing that side of chord melody. From there, go back to your favorite Joe Pass recording and make note of the various textures that you can hear in Joe’s solo guitar arrangements. Moving from a 2 to 3 note voicing can seem like a small choice, for example. But, it’s these small textural details that often make Joe’s playing stand out amongst the rest.

Phrasing

The next element of Joe’s solo guitar playing that you can add to your own vocabulary is his

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focus on phrasing. Joe was a master at Jazz guitar phrasing, as he never played run-on lines even though he had to the technique to easily do so.

By working definitive phrases, lines with a beginning-middle-end structure to them, you’ll lead the listener through your arrangement as opposed to constantly throwing notes at them.

As well, a big part of Joe’s phrasing was his ability to put in pauses, slow down phrases, and speed up lines in his playing. One of the best parts of playing solo guitar is that you don’t have to worry about a band following you, and vice-versa. If you feel the phrase needs to slow down, then you slow it down. If you want to hold a pause a bit longer than normal, go for it. These are the types of small musical choices that can make solo Jazz guitar so effective, and so much fun to play. And Joe was a master of making those choices in just the right moments.

Deciding on the Right Key

When learning the solo guitar arrangement below, you’ll notice that it’s in a new key, D major compared to Bb major in the other arrangements.

One of the coolest things about playing solo guitar, and something Joe Pass took advantage of, is you can change the key without worrying about how that affects other instruments.

To make a melody line easier to harmonize, use certain areas of the fretboard for bass notes, or even bring open strings into your arrangement, feel free to change the key. This is something you’ll see in many of Joe Pass’ solo guitar arrangements, including his famous version of Round Midnight played in E compared to the original Eb.

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Chord Substitutions

Joe also loved to spice up his chord progressions when playing Jazz guitar using all, and more, of the substitutions you learned about earlier in this lesson. In the study below, you’ll apply ii-V, secondary dominant, dim7 as 7b9, and more Jazz guitar substitutions to After You’re Gone. One of the things that made Joe such a genius on the guitar, is that he never really used advanced substitutions in his playing. At least not on a regular basis. Instead, he went for what was easy, and most importantly, what sounded the best for that musical situation. Studying Joe Pass solo guitar arrangements is a big lesson in subtlety and how to effectively use a few key substitutions for maximum results. As you’ve already studied these subs in earlier chord melody arrangements, see if you can spot them in this Joe Pass chord melody. If you get stuck, or want to check your work, post your thoughts in the comments section below.

Odd Meter Bars

Here’s where Joe really puts his stamp on playing chord melody and solo guitar.

For Joe, the line he’s playing always trumps the form of the tune.

Not to say that he ignored form, he didn’t. But. When he was playing a melodic phrase, he let the phrase play out rather than shorten it to fit the bar he was playing over. This meant adding in bars of 5/4, 2/4, 3/4, etc. when playing solo guitar arrangements. You can see an example of this approach in the study below, where a bar of 5/4 is used at to extend a long, single-note run. Again, when playing solo guitar you have the freedom to extend your lines in this fashion.

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Give it a try, but don’t overdo it. When used properly, as Joe did, using odd-meter bars can be highly effective. But, if overused, these moments can become predictable and long-winded. Finding the right moments for these lines, and using them sparingly, is key to finding success with changing time signatures in your chord melody tunes.

Riffs vs. Melody Line

The last Joe Pass solo guitar concept you’ll study in this lesson is the use of riffs vs. the melody line. This isn’t the same as putting lines in between the melody line, which Joe was also fond of doing.

It’s replacing the melody line with a chord or single-note run.

When doing so, Joe played a run and left that section of the melody out of his arrangement, at least in that chorus of the tune. As always, this can be a highly effective concept to use in your chord melody playing. But, if overdone you can lose the sense of melody all together, causing the arrangement to sound like a solo and not a tune at all. So, notice where these moments occur in the arrangement below, where the melody line is missing and a lick is in its place. Then, go back and listen to your favorite Joe Pass album and notice the moments when Joe replaces the melody line with a line of his own. Doing so will give you an idea, and the confidence, to properly use this concept in your own chord melodies.

Now that you’ve studied the Joe Pass chord melody concepts in this study, it’s time to take this study onto the fretboard. It’ll take you some time and practice to get this chord melody under your fingers. But, it’ll open new doors in your playing, and prepare you to learn a full Joe Pass solo guitar arrangement as you move forward in your development.

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Click to hear VmP

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Bassline Chord Melody The final approach to building a chord melody, although a very minimal one, is to use a walking bassline underneath the melody line.

While adding a bassline gives you a new texture to play with in your solo-guitar vocabulary, it can also provide a new technical challenge to overcome in the woodshed.

This approach can be found by the late, great, guitarist Ted Greene on his Solo Guitar album, and is quite effective when playing a longer set of chord melody standards. In the example below, you’ll be adding a walking bassline underneath the melody line, keeping the melody mostly on the upper 2 strings and the bass notes on the lower 2 strings.

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By doing so, you’re leaving yourself room to add in some chords, 3rds and 7ths mostly, in between those lines if you feel up for the challenge.

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As is the case with any chord melody, you’ll need to be flexible with your melody fingering. Here, there are times when the melody needs to be adjusted from the original fingering to fit the bassline. As well, the melody line will drop down to the 3rd string when needed to make the bassline work more smoothly underneath that line. If you decide to put chords in between the bass and melody lines, then you might reconsider some of those fingering choices to make the chords easier to squeeze in between. But. For now, you can begin by learning how to play this example chord melody with a walking bassline in your studies. Then, when you’re ready, take a melody you know, pop it up on the top strings, and start to add bass notes below that melody line. It may seem like a difficult technique to pull off, and it can be, especially from a fingering perspective. But, with time, and some experience in the woodshed, you’ll be able to add this new chord melody approach to your combo and solo-guitar repertoire.

Click to hear VmP

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Do you have any questions about chord melody? Share them in the comments section below.

7 Comments

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1. Al B., August 21, 2015: Matt, Another excellent study piece. I’ve gotten more out of your exercises than any other and have totally enjoyed them. I start off fumbling but after a bit can actually produce some decent playing. Your approach works for me and I’m very grateful for your offerings. Always looking forward to the next study. Thank you. Cheers, Al B. 2. Dave, August 21, 2015: I liked the Joe Pass section, thanks. I have to ask, what’s going on with all the bold font? 3. Matt Warnock, August 21, 2015: Thanks Dave. Because the lesson is so long I use bold so people can skim down, find the important words in each sentence, and get what they want quickly. It helps so that people don’t have to read the whole lesson, since it’s long, to find what they need. Cheers. 4. Marat, August 22, 2015: Hey Matt! Your lessons are totally awesome! Never seen anything like that with that level of analysis and ease of instructions. Here, in the chord melody first sample, I don’t quite get why the C-F-Bb chord appears in the first fret on top of Bb note. Seems that it’s an F but why with 4th note? It’s F11 then? Or it’s just sus4 chord which uses one note from next chord? Can you please clarify? Seems I’m missing something here… Thanks! 5. Matt Warnock, August 22, 2015: Thanks Marat. That’s an Eb6/9 chord, so the C is the 6th, the F is the 9th, and the Bb is the 5th. Cool chord to check out. Cheers. 6. Marat, August 22, 2015: Thanks Matt! 7. Laurence Balmer, August 25, 2015: Thanks Matt – a great resource

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The Complete Guide to Chord Melody

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