I’ve been shifting my focus toward learning full songs rather than just riffs, licks, or solos. I’m looking for pieces that sound complete on a single guitar—something that doesn’t rely on a singer to carry the melody, and doesn’t need a backing track to feel full.
I’m not really interested in “campfire” style songs where you just strum chord progressions and need someone to sing over them, nor do I want purely lead parts that only work if there’s a backing track or accompanying band. My goal is to find arrangements that would be great to play at a casual get-together, but still feel musically rich when played solo.
While I love chord melody arrangements, many are still beyond my current skill level. And when I search for “guitar arrangements,” I often end up with classical pieces that aren’t quite what I’m after.
What keywords or search terms do you use to find songs that stand on their own on one guitar and aren’t overly complex?
Are there any strategies or resources you recommend for discovering and learning full, self-contained guitar arrangements?
That’s the problem with chord melody the easiest way to learn it is to study basic classical techniques to master it. Once you get these techniques down you can apply them to rock music.
Six String Fingerpicking is a really good place to start. He doesn’t teach classical he does a good job of teaching modern song by band/people like the Beatles, Clapton etc.
I’ve read your other posts on the community so I understand that you have been playing for about a year and find the fingerstyle chord melodies on the website like Happy Birthday and Greensleeves complicated.
It is pretty normal since I remember learning them after more than a year in my journey.
So, for now, I’d suggest learning easy melodies instead of chord melodies. This youtube channel has many Easy Guitar Melodies
@andreybutov
Your long term goal of playing chord-melody arrangements is a fine one and I hope you achieve it.
You will help yourself and give a big boost to your ability to learn such techniques if you build a solid foundation of chord and song knowledge.
You may not be excited at strumming songs in a campfire style. I would encourage you to follow that path anyway. You will acquire so much knowledge and experience of how songs work, how chord progressions are put together. And with a little musical understanding you will also learn how melodies and chords work together. Without some fundamentals to support your learning, you will be simply playing fret numbers and string numbers that you learn by rote.
Learn songs, learn songs, learn songs.
When I read the original question I right away thought of fingerstyle. Kansas’s song Dust in the wind comes to mind. So does gordon lightfoots song If you could read my mind. I bought the lesson for that many years ago at Jerrys Guitar bar
Hi Andre,
Super post… and one that’s got many people here thinking about stuff I’m sure! It might be that your post starts a general conversation on the Community about where we are, where we want to go, and how we’re gonna get there. But meantime…
It’s great that you are thinking and asking about what you want to achieve.
I might be stating the obvious, but anyway here goes:
Like all of us here, you want to make music and use music to connect.
Now, I love chords - big ones, swirly ones , partials, wispy ones and crunchy ones, but really music is all about two things:
Melody & rhythm
So as @Richard_close2u says, learn songs . Yep. I will add to that, learn the whole song . Learn the tune, the melody, mess around and pick out the tune on the fretboard and feel how chords can support the line. Simple Bluegrass is very very good for this.
Enjoy the journey
Cheers
Ruaridh
I play a lot of fingerstyle but NEVER fingerstyle songs. In other words i’ll never replace the vocal with an integrated melody. I do build my songs in layers and add my own complexity as I get better and my feel and understanding of the song evolves.
That way you will be able to “know” and bring a basic version of a soon right very soon but it keeps getting more complex over the years. I do that by bringing melody to the chords with embellishments and chord variations, mixing picking, strumming, lead motives etc.
The result is, I can bring several versions of the same song, for almost all songs I perform live. A vocelized one, a slowed, moody version, a swingy one, a melodically enriched one etc.
I think that method is lot more durable than trying to work months to learn and perfect a song “as-is” and ending up playing it nearly exactly as somebody else, perhaps a bit more sloppy. It will have little of youself in it.
Otherwise I would find it hard to name specific songs that relay on just chord tones or even the exlusive shape the current chord fits in.
So, it boils down to be able to do the basic strummign of the chords in a tight rythm. that is the foundation or eveything that is built upon it. If you don’t get that vibe and structure engrained in your memory first, it will be hard to do the more melodic and exotic things over it.
Archives of my Live Club sessions that can serve as an inspiration for you to “Make songs your own”
The 3spice up your open/barre chord" sessions show you how to go from the typical cmapfire chords to more interesting flavours or variations of the same chord family
This sounds like grocery store and elevator music. When I was a teenage, the last one out of the restaurant had to turn off the Muzack, this is what all the music sounded like.
No offense to anyone. There is absolutely guitar skills here, i would love to play like that.
She is impressive but does it leave an impression that the original does not? I dont know. There is something about the human voice that draws people. Maybe its just me.
Hello Andrey, I’m pretty sure you know you need to develop your skills before being able to play a chord melody arrangement, even if simple…and at the same time I’m pretty sure you’ll get there with practice and dedication…some musical knowledge is required as well, at least about scales and how chords are constructed; I highly reccomend Justin’s Practical Music Theory Course because it’ll make you understand things in a practical way until it will click in your mind how to apply that knowledge for learning your chord melodies!
Two practical things you should really do to build your skills in this direction:
start from chords: play the song using fingerpicking patterns and sing or simply hum the melody - once you’re confident with this record your playing and fingerpick the melody line in time along with the accompainement part you have recorded;
start from melody: learn to play the melody line respecting the lenght of notes - you need a good musicsheet where the Rhythm information is explicit and where the chords are written over the melody - when you can do that add the root bass note of the chord on beat 1 of each bar, this is I think the simplest form of chord melody and it’ll sound really sweet if you can do it properly.
If you can’t do these two things it’s very unlikely you’ll ever feel satisfied in playing a chord melody from a tab, you’ll always lack your connections, with yourself and musical mind and with your instrument. It’s exactly as Richard says
@Richard_close2u Richard could you please check that there’s nothing wrong in what I’ve adviced? These are the things that are working for me and hope sharing them will help you @andreybutov; along the way you’ll find out how developing a good technique in both hands is important to make your melodies flow smooth and sweet.
Hey Ed, @Fast-Eddie
Speaking for myself, Yes! I’ve seen Gabriella on YouTube in the past & find her playing inspirational - the way she makes her guitar “sing” to you… it’s pretty amazing to watch & hear! Thanks for posting this (pertinent to this thread) video!!!
Hey Jason, @Ontime
if this is elevator music, I’m riding up & down & up & down till the song’s over!!!
Andrey, @andreybutov
I definitely think there are songs that are “better” for chord-melody arrangements than others. That said, I have seen songs performanced in the past that you’d think really need the lyrics to make them sound ‘complete’ & yet the musician makes his/her guitar really “sing” the lyrics to you… Fast-Eddies post above is but one example…
check out this:
or this:
or even this:
(Note that the 12-string guitar played here is a D’Angelico Fulton 12 - my favorite brand of guitar & this particular one is on my wish list!)
So, as you can see, songs that wouldn’t ordinarily be considered chord-melody tunes can be played that way…
My 2 cents.
Good luck!
Well played, I would plroboble chill with you and enjoy. It was very late last night. like I said she incredibly talented. Something I absolutly would not mind emulating.
I just think adding vocals is also achivable for most people as well. I didnt say that in a nice way.
Hey, no worries Jason @Ontime ,
I also remember Muzac all too well!!!
Andrey @andreybutov has a good point… learning songs at the level you WANT to play can be overwhelming, ‘campfire’ style songs - especially if singing is difficult for you - often feel a bit boring. THAT is why I’m still a beginner after years & years of playing AT playing guitar. I’d get bored with the repetition of trying to get a song ‘in the bag’ & end up frustrated - which led to putting the guitar down for weeks/months at a time. Justin (along with Richard @Richard_close2u & his mantra) has ‘shown me the light’ about how learning songs can be rewarding, even when it’s not a song you particularly like… I was not really excited about most of the Grade 1 song recommendations - but learning them helped a lot with technique & understanding song structure!
This is why most people quit and not just guitar but everything. They don’t realize how hard something is because the pros make it look so easy. This is why sports like pickle ball become so popular. Tennis and other racket sport take time to learn and get good at.
That is such a true statment. In the middle of this last November in my grade 3 consolidation I decided I would go back and do a bunch of the grade 1 songs and try and do all the little “flair” or extras things Justin shows us right at the end of the videos. I realized when I started and went through most of these I did not have an open mind enough to get why I should be learning them. I didnt know enough to actually umderstand what was important about learning them. So ended up going through a ton of them. It really helped, justin has so many gold nuggets in many of those videos.
I was sitting here a bit ago thinking about instrumentals and I occurred to me how closed minded I was being. After all Moby Dick from Led Zeppelin and YYZ from Rush is all instrmental. And I played in a Drum and Bugle corps no vocals. Lol so yeah
I am going to take this thread and these comments as a lesson for myself. Just like that the 1st year songs and like I do many things in life. Don’t discount them because its not my thing at the time. There is benefits in instruments and maybe not every one needs words to express them selves. As a matter of fact maybe even a better guitarist can do it with out vocals.
Enough of the croawling through my own head. Back to practice.
like I said she incredibly talented. Something I absolutly would not mind emulating.
