Chord melody: solo jazz guitar
Play a tune alone: harmonise a melody with drop-2 and drop-3 voicings, walk a bass line under chord stabs, build intros, endings and turnarounds, arrange a complete ballad, and develop the fingerstyle and hybrid-picking technique that makes it all sound like one instrument.
- Harmonise any melody note on strings 1 and 2 with a drop-2 or drop-3 voicing chosen by inversion, and decide which notes to harmonise and which to leave single
- Construct a walking bass line from chord tones and approach notes and play it with chord stabs on beats 2 and 4 in two independent voices
- Play I–vi–ii–V intros, pedal-point intros, tag endings, the Basie ending and a rubato ending in at least three keys
- Arrange a 16-bar tune for solo guitar in two voices and explain every voicing choice by melody note, bass motion and register
- Control thumb and fingers independently, balance melody against accompaniment, and choose between fingerstyle and hybrid picking for a given passage
Chord melody is the point where everything in this course comes together: the voicings of modules 4 and 8, the guide-tone and approach-note thinking of module 7, the rhythmic control of module 5, and the form awareness you have built playing tunes. A solo guitarist is bassist, pianist and horn player at once, and the craft lies in deciding, beat by beat, which of those roles matters most.
The five lessons move from one skill to a complete arrangement. First you harmonise a melody note by note and learn to choose inversions by the note on top. Then you put a walking bass under chord stabs. Lesson 3 gives you the furniture of a solo performance, intros, endings and turnarounds, in several keys. Lesson 4 is a complete original ballad arrangement with every decision explained, plus the method for arranging a standard the same way. Lesson 5 is about the right hand, because none of this sounds like music until the thumb and fingers can balance three parts at once.
You should already own the drop-2 inversions on strings 5-4-3-2 and 4-3-2-1 (lesson 8.1, lesson 8.2) and the drop-3 shapes (lesson 8.3), and be comfortable with the chromatic approach notes of lesson 7.4. Keep the chord dictionary open while you work: every voicing in this module is in it, with the degree of every note labelled.