A chord melody is a piece of music where the melody and chords are played simultaneously by one instrument, making it sound as if two instruments are actually playing. On a guitar the notes may be plucked or strummed or a mixture of both.
I have written this piece of music as a very easy introduction to strumming the chords whilst holding down the melody notes. The piece is designed for a 3-string guitar tuned to G D G to play in the key of G. However the TAB could be used on any 3-string guitar tuned to open 5ths tuning. The tune would then sound in the key of whatever the guitar is tuned to. e.g. Open E ( E B E ) would sound in E and open D (D A D) would sound in D.
Playthrough
I have made a short video playthrough in addition to the video lesson which can be found at the bottom of the page.
Tips To Help You As You Start To Learn This Piece
This may be a new way of playing for some of you. Playing chords is one thing and playing a melody or lead guitar another, but to do both at once sounds impossible. However with careful planning to ensure that stretches are not too awkward, it’s perfectly possible to play both at the same time.
Have Your Finger Positions Ready
Just as when you are starting out learning chord changes, you need to be ready to move your fingers. Where possible, hover your finger just over the fret where you will need to play. Don’t touch the string at all, but have it ready to be pressed down onto the string just behind the correct fret wire. I demonstrate this for bars 1 and 2 in the video which is linked at the bottom of the page.
Start Slow And Steady
You will need to start slowly at first – remember that the rhythm is very important and we need to keep that steady as soon as we can. when you are first working out where to put your fingers, it can be helpful to pick out the notes that are changing and practice them on their own first. Once you can play the piece a bit more fluently, a metronome or drum machine will really help you to keep a steady beat. Just set the tempo to a slow beat to start e.g. 60-80 bpm
Knowing Where You Are On The Fretboard
Use the dots on the fretboard to help you navigate. Side dots are a useful aid and if you don’t have them on your guitar, you can add them yourself. Temporary solutions include stickers and masking tape ( you can write fret numbers on the masking tape if you like).
More permanent solutions are to use pyrography or inlay your own dots.
Playing A Chord Melody With A Slide
Sometimes we will need to move quite a long way up the fretboard and it’s important to know where we are going to. Sliding can help with us and it adds extra interest to the song. I mean finger sliding rather than playing with a ceramic, metal or glass slide. Some chord melodies can be played with such a slide but this piece is not ideal as bar 14 requires 2 strings to be fretted with an open string between. An alternative for this bar would be to fret the quavers at the 7th fret and play the D chord there:
Look For Bars That Are The Same
Often music is repeated within a piece either exactly the same or with a slight variation. Get used to looking through the TAB or manuscript to see which parts are the same or similar as this will speed up your learning of the piece.
Try Playing The Piece Backwards
By this, I don’t mean play the notes in reverse order! If you are struggling with the middle section try playing the last bar or two until you are confident. Then try the last 4 bars. Then add in another 2 bars.
We often practice the beginning of a song much more than the end and it can make us feel like we are getting stuck in the middle as we go into more and more unfamiliar territory. By practicing the end of the song and feeling confident in it, we can begin to feel like we are heading home through the song, rather than climbing a higher and higher mountain.
PDF Download Of A Simple Chord Melody In G
Here is the sheet music I have written for you to download. It is provided free for you to use for your practice and is not to be distributed apart from through this page. Please feel free to share this link if you want to share this music. I have a version with the strumming pattern below the YouTube Lesson if you’d like it.
YouTube Lesson
The video lesson for this piece is here:
Strumming Pattern
For those of you who would like the strumming pattern, here it is: