Arranging Chord Melodies - for Charlie

I haven't been playing AT ALL, though I do occasionally check in to marvel at the irreversible drainage of time that prevents me from picking up a guitar. Last time I was here, I noticed that Charlie had left me a couple of nice comments (thanks, Charlie), and a question. He's interested in chord melody and wants me to describe the approach I take to finding appropriate chords. This is very flattering as it suggests I have the first shagging clue about playing guitar, which of course I don't, but never being one to let ignorance get in the way of an opinion, I'll have a shot at answering it.

The first thing I'd say, is that chord-melody playing is not a system, or rather, I've never seen an approach to it decently systematized. Think of it instead as a grab-bag of solutions to discrete problems of arrangement. Really good players seem to have an unending supply of these piecemeal solutions that they can apply to produce really polished arrangements. That's why a lot of the books are unsatisfactory from a student's point of view: there's really no assembly-line approach.

But here we go: you don’t need to learn a ton of chords, just so long as you know how to spell them. In fact, learning loads of grips, or memorizing the contents of a chord dictionary is a big waste of time. Instead of thinking about chords as a set series of shapes, think about them as individual notes, temporarily placed together.

What's most important is that you know what all the notes are in the chord. So if you're trying to spell Bbmaj7th, you know that the 1^st is Bb, the 3^rd is D, the 5^th is F, and the 7^th is A.

When arranging a chord melody, you basically want to play the melody note on the top E or B string, and the rest underneath. It is preferable (though not essential) to have the root of the chord as the lowest note.

Remember that the chart is only a guide, and you shouldn’t be afraid to change it. A lot of charts have ridiculously fancy extensions that you should just reduce to their basic tonality. Fmaj7b5#9, for example, is just Fmaj; Gm7#11 is Gm7 (often, these big extended chords are pertinent only to piano or big band. As guitarists who can only play four or five notes at a time, we only need to know the basic tonality on top of which we’ll add the melody note.)

The most important notes in any chord are the 3^rd and the 7^th. They are the notes that tell you whether the chord is major, minor, or dominant. You can sometimes leave them out (adding a 4^th instead of a 3^rd for an ambiguous suspended sound, for example, or replacing a 7^th with a 6^th for a different kind of major sound). As long as those notes are at the core of your chord, you can build all kinds of other things around it.

If the melody note is not a note in the basic chord, then you add an extension: 9, 11, or 13. If there’s suddenly too many notes in your chord, the first note to drop is usually the 5^th (but see below).

If the melody note is not in the basic chord, and not even in the scale, then you need to make an alteration: b5, #5, b9, #9, #11th, b13th etc.

If you just can’t seem to make the melody note fit with the chord, or else it just sounds bollocks, consider playing the chord elsewhere on the neck, or using one of the many available reharmonizations -- substituting the written chord and putting another in its place (also see below).

All this means that you really need to know your fretboard. If the chart says play Bbmaj7th with the D on the E string, then you have to look around the neck and find all other notes in a usable fingering: Bb is on string 4, 8th fret; F is on string 3, 10th fret; A is on string 2, 10th fret; D is on string 1, 10th fret.

Alternatively (or even better, as well as), you can learn all the inversions on the various different string sets, especially those most useful for chord-melody, the inversions on set 1-2-3-4, set 2-3-4-5, and set  2-3-4-6. This is excellent practice, but in the end, without understanding what you're spelling, then it's still just learning a load of grips. Spelling the chords out note-by-note will not only help you find those inversions, but it will actually teach you what it is you really need to know by showing you how the chord is built. It's grammar rather than mere vocabulary. Does that help at all?

Extensions
Adding extensions to chords can leave you with too many notes in the chord. Here are some rules for dropping them:

• When playing a 9th, you can lose the 1 (unless you need if for your bass, in which case, lose the 5th).
• When playing a 13th, you can lose the 5th.
• When playing a #11th, you can lose the 5th.
• When playing a 6th, you can lose the 7th.
• When playing an 11th, you can lose either the 5ths or the 3rd.

Common Substitutions
There are lots of substitutions you can make. Here's a few for each chord:

• For the I chord: Chords I, iii, and VI can be used interchangeably; use V#9 in place of I.
• For the ii Chord: ii and IV can be used interchangeably (ie. replace Dmin7 with Fmaj7); In a ii-V progression, change the ii chord to a dominant chord (ie, Dmin7-G7 becomes D7-G7). This creates a “V of V” as D7 would be the V chord in the key of G; In a ii-V progression, the ii chord can become a min7b5 chord (ie, Dmin7-G7 becomes Dmin7b5-G7). As long as the 5th (A) is not the top note, you may flat the 5 in any of the above D minor chords.
• For the iii Chord: I, iii, and vi can be used interchangeably (eg, all Emin7s with C on top are in effect C majors).
• For the IV Chord: ii and IV can be used interchangeably.
• For the V chord: V and vii can be used interchangeably; As a diminished chord is similar to a V chord with a flat nine, play diminished whose root a one step higher than the V chord, ie play G#diminished for G7; Add colour tones and alterations such as, b5, #5, b9, #9, #11, sus., sus.b9, etc.
• For the vi Chord: I, iii and vi can be used interchangeably; vi chords may also be converted to Dominant 7th chords, adding colour tones and alterations.
• For the vii Chord: Substitute vii for V.

Comments

[Leonardo]

Wow. How come they don't put such an explanation in the very first page of every one of the billions of "learn chord-melody" methods available out there?
I'm printing it and putting it on my wall.

Thanks!!

LEo

[Charlie Barker]

Andrew,

Thanks so much for taking the time to explain your approach to chord melody playing. I had hoped this sort of playing would require much less time and talent :) or that there was a secret formula I was missing, but you have disabused me of that notion. Spelling it is. The part about extensions and substitutions was info I had really been trying to collect. Thanks for the great summary.

I am going to take what you have posted here and try to work out some Christmas tunes (chord melody style). If all goes well you should hear from me again on Dec 24th...2008, maybe!

Incidentally, I was undertaking about my 3rd frustrating foray into jazz when I first came across your site. Your Monty Python-esque posting about your progress kept me from bagging yet again as I realized, once and for all, that the "art" is in the doing. Keep posting when you can...you DO have readers.

Thanks again,
Charlie Barker
(aka Dave)

[lyle robinson]

Hi Andrew. I really enjoyed your take on chord melody and was wondering if you would mind me adding it to the "Players Corner" section of Jazz Guitar Life, with full credit of course. Please let me know and take care. All the best.

Lyle
http://www.jazzguitarlife.com

[Steven Davies]

The best way to arrange chord melodies is with piano.
But that is the most difficult way too.

[Jeff Wright]

Great article - I really got a lot out of it. I too am a fledgling jazz guitarist, albeit at a much lower level than you.

I'm still trying to memorize the chord 'shapes' for all the inversions of maj7th, min7th, dom7th, dim and 1/2-dim chords on various combinations of strings (I've decided to go for 1-2-3-4, 2-3-4-5, 6-4-3-2 and 5-3-2-1). One thing I'm finding is that if I know where the root, 3rd, 5th and 7th are for each of the shapes I'm memorizing (and what the names of those notes are), I can use an appropriate voicing underneath the melody line, and thereby reasonably approximate a "fingerstyle solo" jazz rendition of many of the standards I'm in the process of learning. Of course this also means I have to know the fretboard inside and out, which is a task in and of itself.

I'm learning that there is no "silver bullet". It takes time and effort. But I'm getting better and it's a lot of fun in the process!