What are chord melodies? Why learn chord melodies or learn to arrange chord melodies? And how can learning chord melodies help me understand theory better? These are 3 questions that you may ask when looking at the topic of this blog.

Firstly, what are chord melodies?

Chord melodies, as the name suggests, are exactly that: the melody of a song mixed with its chords. The melody of the song is what the singer will usually sing, or it will be the main musical theme of the song if played by an instrument other than the voice. The chords are what will provide the accompaniment to the song. If you put the two together you will in actual fact be playing both the role of the accompaniment and the role of the singer on your guitar.

Here is an example of a saxophone player playing a melody over an accompaniment backtrack, for you to get the idea of the two separate parts: Click Here. 

Secondly, why learn chord melodies or learn to arrange chord melodies?

Chord melodies are a great way for a contemporary guitarist to play solo without a band. This is one of the main reasons why I encourage this approach. Not every guitar player or student has access to people to play with and if someone asks them to play a song or they want to show what they have been doing on the instrument, a chord melody is a good way to play a complete solo song. I encourage this approach with my own students because if they learn to arrange chord melodies by themselves, I feel I have left them with a skill to be able to create music for the rest of their lives and be able to play for themselves and friends/family without needing backtracks or other musicians, a tool to be independent on the instrument so to speak.

Lastly, how can learning chord melodies help me understand theory better?

I use charts from fakebooks and realbooks to teach my students to arrange chord melodies. This process teaches them to identify the keys that the songs are in and identify chord progressions in the chart. A big factor in learning chord melodies is learning chord construction, so I take students through song charts with basic major and minor chords at first and they learn to be able to construct different chord voicings for the chords in the song, so the chords are able to fit the melody.

As students move to more advanced chord voicings we take a look at jazz standards, etc. It’s best to start by getting yourself a pop/rock fake book and then move onto a jazz fake/real book. Through this process a student learns to understand keys, chord progressions, chord construction, scales and melody and, most importantly, the skill to be independent as a guitar player and the ability to entertain solo.

This is what I believe is a good approach to learning theory on the guitar, also to equip oneself with the necessary tools to be able to create the joy of music wherever one is in life. The only obstacle you may encounter is that you need to be able to read music, but this approach teaches you to start reading music. You don’t have to be able to sight read quickly for this, just be able to work out melodies, as the approach is all about taking the time to work out solo guitar music.

To end off with some inspiration, here is a demonstration of a chord melody of What a Wonderful World:

Click Here.