Hi I'm Tomas. I'm going to show you how to arrange a melody and chords into a
fingerstyle guitar solo so you can play it all together on one guitar. Let's do
this.
Hey there when I first started playing guitar I was baffled by people who could
play the melody and chords together in one guitar. You know I was happy to just
be able to strum chords while somebody else sang or played in the melody but
over the years I've found it's really not that hard and I'm gonna show you a
step by step system that you can use to get the hang of it. Now that doesn't
mean it won't take some practice but with a system it'll be much easier than
just trying to wing it. I'm gonna use the song Happy Birthday to demonstrate the
steps. Now it's just because I know most everybody knows this melody but you can
apply it to pretty much any chords and melody.
Step #1 is get clear on that melody.
Here's that melody for happy birthday and I'm just gonna play a part of it for
now and repeats different change. Okay let's take that much.
Now the next step, once you're clear on the melody I normally play through
that whole melody and get it clearly in my mind and in my ear as well as see
where the notes are on this part of the guitar of the upper neck. Now I wanna
add a bass note and to do that I need to know the chords for this song so we're
gonna start off playing the chords and I'll hum the melody. Now I already
know the chords the C G and F and if you don't know the chords to a song you're
gonna want to figure that out. One way to do is find some sheet music with the
chords, search online or you could do it by ear. You hum the melody and play
the course until it sounds right. But anyway you look at you're going to have
to figure out the chords before you can put the melody and the chords together. So
I'm gonna start with a C chord. I'm gonna hum the melody and see how it fits with
the chords.
Now I heard a couple of things. One is I realize there's kind of three pulses
to each chord - na da one two three one two three. I also heard that the melody kind
of does a little what we call a pick up. It starts before the downbeat of the
chord so it's na da da and the chords start. So that's gonna help me know where to
play the bass notes that we need. Now step #3, step #2 is get the chord
step #3 is get the bass note of the chords and play it with the melody. Now now
this is going to take a little practice. I'm gonna pinched the bass note and the
melody together so I'm playing the melody with my fingers - that wasn't such
a clean melody but you got the idea. Now I'm gonna add that bass note and I want
to add it kind of on the downbeat before the chords would normally strum so
there's a pickup it's da da and then the chord will come here - da da so that's when I
play the bass note and da da da da da da then there's really a chord here that's the G and
I'm gonna take the bass note for the G it's a G note. Now keep going da da that's a
downbeat or the chord B and here comes the C chord da da da
Now that makes for a very simple version of this fingerpicking style song with
the bass note it would be first of all a C. I will do the pickup - C base note to
the G and again G and back to the C and I'm using my fingers so that I can use
the first and the pinky to play the melody. I can use a second if I need it
too but I'm reserving that third to play the bass note. Now for step #4 I'm
gonna play the Colcord along with that melody so now I'm gonna play the C chord
along with the bass note and we will use the thumb for the bass note so I'll start
out with a C chord. First step pick up C and G so down B pick up G chord
see I'm using my pinky and first finger for the melody.
Now we've gotten to where I can do the bass note. I got the chord which is
basically the harmony of this tune. For step #5 we're going to add some movement
to it. There's different kinds of movement. The most obvious one for this
one for me is a kind of an arpeggio so I can play the melody and play other notes
in between when I don't need to play a melody something like this.
You might wanna hum the song and play it as an arpeggio to get an idea what that
sound like - something like this da da da da da da
I'm just worried about the cords with my left hand and doing the melody with my
voice. Now I'm gonna put those two together and this will just take some
experiment till I get __ so here's that, I'll start simple.
Okay that wasn't much of a movement but I'm working towards that I'm gonna
refine it as I go.
I'm going for simple and I'll embellish it until I improved. Here's a little
more complex version.
Now I have a quick chord change at that very end so I can't wait for the
downbeat of a measure so to speak for that chord I need to change base notes
whenever the chords change so that last measure I have to kind of go back and
forth quick pretty quick, listen. So I'm changing the base note every time the
chord changes. Now I want to show you it's sort of I've worked with this for a
while I've played with it and I'm going to show you something that sounds a
little more complete after I played with it for a while. And this really is how I
figured this out. I arranged the song this way by just this process I'm
describing so here's happy birthday with some
embellishments and then I'll give you some tips to help you move forward.
The
the first tip is to start simple and embellish later. Get the basic structure
of the song with the base notes that's the most important part the base and the
melody and then fill in between. Add embellishments and little tricks along
the way. One of the things I like to do with songs is sometimes to add a harmony
two notes at once like listen to this.
I didn't start that way. The tune was very simple to start.
You see the difference? Tip #2 is practice some prearranged songs in other
words learn something that somebody's already written down that'll help your
fingers to develop the technique to move with the thumb and independent movement
but also you'll start learning little tricks and ways that you can put the
melody in the bass note and chords together.
Tip #3 is practice exercises. Practice arpeggio patterns like this -- or like this.
There are many different arpeggio styles. Practice the pinching technique that's
where you play one note with your thumb and one with your finger.
Practice staggered style that's when we play one note to another and fingerpicking
patterns.
All these are exercises that will help you when you go to a range of piece
fingerstyle. They'll kind of jump to your aid and
help you come up with some kind of rhythm that works for that tune. And the
final tip is if you're really serious about playing fingerstyle, you might want
to take some basic classical guitar lessons. I'm not advocating you become a
super classical guitarist but the basics will help you develop independent finger
movement, be able to read notes better and also get some new tricks up your
sleeve for making the melody and the bass note and the chords all fit
together so that's it for this lesson. If you're a member of my Real Guitar
Success membership there are many exercises for pinching, for stagger nodes
arpeggio patterns and much much more. If you're not a member yet check it out. You
can get started for absolutely free actually. I would love to have you there.
Go to realguitarsuccess.com and I'll put a link somewhere below also. Thanks
again I'll see you soon and leave me a comment good or bad I just love to know
what you're thinking. Thanks