Full transcript of “How To Play The Chords And Melody At The Same Time On One Guitar”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 in this video you learn the key to playing the chords and melody of a song at the same time on guitar often this style of playing is perceived as being difficult to do however this is not necessarily so as is often the case it comes down to how you go about playing and creating chord melody arrangements on guitar hi this is simon candy from acoustic guitarlessonsonline.net and in this lesson you learn what i like to call chord melody mechanics these are very effective exercises and drills designed to build the technique required to play guitar in this way first you're going to learn several exercises built around the skill of holding chord shapes and playing scales at the same time after this you'll then actually play melodies from these scales across the
0:45 chord shapes that you're holding down on the fretboard so let's get to it all right chord melody mechanics so what is that exactly well that's a term i kind of made up so you might not have heard that before necessarily but it's building this the skills needed the technique needed to play chord melody pieces so we're not going to play called melody pieces if you you know watch until the end of the video there is an ebook you can download it's in the description below this one that will take you through how to play chord melody pieces how to create your own chord melody peaches pieces step by step here i want to give you the technique that's required to be able to execute chord melody pieces to be able to play them so we're going to take and it begins with holding chords and playing scales basically at the same
1:31 time on the guitar okay so let me show you lots of ways we could do this but let me show you one way we're going to be in the key of c here i'm going to play a c major scale in the open position here all right c to c [Music] however we're going to extend outside of that too we're going to basically extend it so that we include all the c major notes in that position not necessarily from c to c so i could start from the e f g a b c and i could extend beyond this c d e f g because there are notes below this c and above this one they're also in the key of c and i just want to know all the notes that are available to me in this open position that are in the key of c so it takes me from the low bottom string
2:16 all the way up to the third fret g on the top string now the chords in the key is c we have c we have d minor we have e minor we have f we have g we have a minor we have this b half diminished be diminished um we're going to leave that one out okay we're just going to concentrate on the the six chords that you'll see most often when in the key of c okay the first six chords of the key that's fine we've got scales we've got chords but we want to put these together so the idea here is to hold let's take the c chord for for starters hold the c chord and descend the scale while still holding that c chord shape now as you do you will need to lift certain fingers away from the chord
3:02 because that's the nature of of what's going on here because there are notes in the chord that are part of the scale and there are notes that you'll need to access that require you to move fingers but we want to maintain the chord shape as much as possible so we can sustain the sound of the chord as we play the scale so i've got c here and i'm going to go from my high g just the highest note i can access in the key of c whilst holding my chord shape so it's this g on top i play c and then i come down [Music] just as just to the root note of the chord i could go lower but we'll just go from the highest note possible to the root note of the chord okay descending we'll descend we could ascend two but let's just descend for the you know purpose of
3:47 today's lesson it's not place c lose the shape and then play the scale okay they're two separate entities there if you do it like that we want to bring them into one so when you do what you'll notice is you'll need to use different fingers in a lot of cases for the notes of the scale than what you perhaps would use otherwise because some fingers are busy holding the chord shape and the goal generally is to maintain at least some of the chord ringing through as you play your notes okay so i start with the full shape and i gotta move this first finger because i need the f note and the e and then my pinky plays the d now maybe i would use my third finger normally there but it's busy holding the c down here so that's why the pinky is going to be exercised quite a bit during
4:32 this process so we've got the c holding the shape this first finger tucks in to play that second fret note on the third string because i want to keep this second finger down um i don't want to move that at this point okay because i want that note to ring through that it's holding down the e note there as long as possible now once i played e there i need the d so i need to take that away and then i got my c and then i might just strum the chord at the end that's playing the chord and the scale basically together there okay once more okay as i say you do need to move fingers at times you're going to be able to maintain the whole shape the whole time but only move the fingers when you
5:19 need to and only right when you need to not before not too early obviously not too late either and the idea is to hear the chord sort of visualize sitting at a piano in one hand typically your left hand is playing the c chord and the right hand is playing the notes the c chord sustains the the left hand sustains the c chord and the notes are played on top okay as the c rings out that's what we're doing here just within one hand of course okay it's building that technique that is required to hear the chord ringing through as you play notes okay that's typically what's happening in a lot of chord melody stuff so then we go to the next chord in the key d minor and we do the same thing however we go from the highest note available which
6:05 will be this g note each time to the root note of the chord so with d minor we've got the d minor chord and then [Music] now notice by the time i get to this open g on my way down to the d root note i've lost the chord that's that can't be helped okay we can't that's how it works with that d minor chord so i start with the sustain chord still hear it just at the end it goes it's okay but then i could just form it again at the end okay i just wanna again we're just integrating the scale with the chord okay we're not playing anything in particular we're just again sitting at the piano if you like hitting the chord with the left hand playing the
6:51 notes over the top while that chord sustains as much as possible here okay so e minor is going to have a fair range in fact it's going to be the whole range because we can play an e minor chord this is the third chord in c and we can play that g and come all the way down lose the chord yes but all the way down and then back just to brand it out just play the chord at the end there arpeggiate it or strum it or whatever you want to do so this one again coming all the way down here my first finger tucks into that second fret because that way i can keep my second and third fingers down the whole time well up until then
7:38 then they have to go as i come down the lower part okay all the way down back to e minor then the fourth chord of c is f now i could kind of use this um bar chord bar chord's going to be um awkward thumb over the top yes but let's just keep it simple and play this little uh f you know four string chord okay so we play that in fact let's play yeah let's play that but i'm gonna i won't bar there okay i'm just gonna use my three fingers my pinky goes on the g again that's the highest note and we come down the chord at the end so that's similar to d minor but we
8:23 can maintain that third finger on the whole time and put the other two back on okay it's very different to just playing f killing the chord coming down the scale they're two separate things that we want the two coming together g now when we play g a lot of the time when you play g and you want to add embellishments or melody as we're talking about in this case it's much better to play g with the third and fourth fingers and block out the fifth string and you use two fingers this way bring up the other two to play notes around the chord and we still get a nice big sounding g chord okay and again we come down [Music]
9:10 and then back to the g okay so that's similar to what was happening on the e minor in terms of coming down the scale however notice the pinky notice the fingers you need to use here the pinky's got to be used here because for the third fret notes because my third finger needs to stay planted down here i can't emphasize the importance of letting things ring through when you're doing this sort of style okay g again [Music] and finally the a minor [Music] and you lose the chord then you can bring it back again okay [Music]
9:56 okay so that is the the drill that is the point of the exercises here or the drills holding shapes and then accessing notes of the scale around the chord shape only moving fingers when absolutely necessary trying to sustain the chord as much as possible while playing the scale and as a result you'll see you have to compensate for holding the chord check down with the fingers you use so it's not going to be the usual fingers you would use to play the scale for the most part um as opposed to if you weren't holding chords down if i was playing a c chord and you played the scale yeah you could use a more conventional fingering but when you're doing both parts that's what's required okay so this is really really effective this is these are really effective drills in building
10:43 the technique required that's needed and the know-how for chord melody pieces okay so once you've got a little bit of a hold on those drills you don't have to have them perfect but you're getting the idea of what you need to do and do be patient because it can feel really awkward if you haven't done this sort of playing before it's going to feel kind of weird perhaps but you will get used to it i promise you if you stick with it and then the next sort of step is to just create a little melody out at the scale so for example let's say i've got a melody that goes okay i'm talking about little melody fragments here not some big full-blown melody okay just a little phrase whatever make it up so there's my phrase now i could hold
11:29 the c chord shape and play that melody okay so there's the chord and there's a little melody being played together again like sitting at the piano hitting the chord sustaining the sound of the chord and playing the melody on top okay now you could place that same melody on top of an a minor chord if you wanted okay another chord from the key or perhaps you played on top of an e minor chord okay so the same melody can work across different chords of the same key okay they'll all sort of work together they're all part of the same family of sound if you like but the main point
12:15 here is to just instead of just playing the scale highest note to lowest note or ascend in it or whatever we're now you know carving out sculpting out a little melodic phrase to play over the top of a chord maintaining the chord shape as much as possible so i have to take the first finger away to get this note early in the melody that's okay i've still got enough of the c chord here sounding to you know keep that going so that's that's fine we need to you know obviously move fingers at certain times to get certain notes in the melody um another melody um just lower in the scale the same little sequence really [Music]
13:01 i see when i play that and i get to the second fret on the third string my first finger plays don't i mean i could break the the e note here and use my second finger to play that and then put it back there but i wouldn't do that i would use my first finger why move this finger if we don't need to okay it just breaks the sound it does make a difference to the overall quality of the sound so there's another little melody or maybe something a little lower okay just little melodies this one starts on the eight a little lower normally with chord melody stuff a lot of the melody will be on the top three strings but it can extend lower as well
13:47 so the idea is taking little melodies and playing them across the the chord shapes of the key i'll just more or less stick with c here maybe we'll go to g as well so we could have g it's a little slightly different melodic phrase and putting that on top of the g chord so i start with my g the third and fourth finger g i showed you before strum up the chord and then play the melody that will work on the c2 okay it's all from the same key so you know the idea again little melodies playing across the chords so g here
14:33 sort of more mid-range there [Music] and that would work on c [Music] it would work on a minor okay so you can experiment around a little bit again not creating any arrangement of a piece here just the the skills the the techniques required to be able to play either existing pieces or creating your own which you'll learn how to do with the ebook that's available in the description below this video okay and g again just another little melody [Music] okay so first step chords scale up and down descending ascending holding
15:19 chord shapes second step creating little melodic phrases just um you know um mix up the order of the notes of a little portion of the scale there's a mark phrase now hold a chord shape and play that phrase but from the standpoint of holding the shape so you're going to have to again you know accommodate with the fingering to maintain that chord shape and that's going to be an extra little step to building this skill needed to play chord melody pieces on guitar okay so the next natural step would be to play a melody with chords but have a chord change so a little bit of a vamp perhaps so you know you could be playing your c chord for example little melody and change to
16:06 g okay back to c [Music] okay so same sort of things we're just doing but now including a chord change in there c again i could [Music] see [Music] okay you can fill it out a little bit it's not so much the point here um you don't even have to keep a really strict time when you first do this okay just get used to it so that coming back to that first example again you can just play your melody
16:52 whatever that's going to be you can change it [Music] i think i played something slightly different there anyway which is fine and then [Music] all the previous the second example again [Music] all right you have to be thinking at the beat so much here just play the chord play your little melody little melodic idea change and just sound that chord establish the harmony the progression and then play your melody but again keeping chord shapes down that's the thread throughout this whole lesson is holding chord shapes as much as you
17:38 possibly can as you play melodies scale fragments etc melodic you know ideas around the chords okay um you know i could sort of uh fill it out you know fill it out a little bit and play it a little bit more to time if you're interested in that book below in the description that will take you through that process of filling out things and arpeggiating and all these sorts of things okay so that's not the point of our video here as i've said a couple of times just to make sure you understand the next step or you know you're building the skill if you like to be able to do what is in that ebook
18:24 available to you in the description below this video okay so it's the whole thing is holding chord shapes whilst playing single notes at the same time on one guitar that's that's the the whole point of chord melody or the the bassist the foundation called melody and of course there can be very difficult chord melody pieces they can be pretty simple called melody pieces so it it's often thought of as being really difficult because when you go do a search on youtube you see it and it's often something of a very high level so you think well called melody playing that must be difficult not at all this sort of stuff the basic techniques required can take you quite a long way so work with these ideas the scales with the chords little melodic fragments over those chords and then putting a change in there like i
19:11 was doing there with the c to g okay and that will set you up with a great foundation for playing chord melody arrangements on the guitar if you like this lesson then you'll love this free ebook audio i've created for you called how to play the chords and melody of a tune at the same time on one guitar in five easy steps in this ebook you'll learn a number of ways to create your own chord melody arrangements on guitar step by step including the importance of the key you choose when arranging a tune the key matters because some will be more friendly than others when it comes to creating your arrangements making life that much easier for you as a result you also learn how to use more interesting and varied chords to broaden the scope and sound of your arrangements in addition to proven methods and
19:57 strategies for playing and creating core melody pieces so click the link in the description below this video and download your free ebook audio how to play the chords and melody of a tune at the same time on one guitar in five easy steps let me know in the comments section what acoustic guitar topics you'd like to see covered in future videos if you like this video hit that like button and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and of course hit that notification bell button so youtube can tell you when i've released a new video this is simon candy from acoustic guitar lessons online.net as always thank you for watching this video i really appreciate your time and i look forward to seeing you in the next video [Music]
20:48 [Applause] [Music] you
