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Learn Guitar Online – Easy As 1-2-3 the basics – melody

By Mike Hayes | January 15, 2010

Have you ever played your guitar for someone and they ask you
“what was that” you were playing? Now, you might be puzzled why
they asked you that in the first place, after all it’s pretty obvious
what you were playing isn’t it?

This is a fairly common situation, you know what you are playing
because usually you have the music in front of you or you are
singing the song in your head; and therein lies the problem …
when you are strumming the chords of a song the listener has no
idea what you are playing.

The fact that the backgrounds of so many songs are exactly the
same only the melodies are different means from the listener’s
point of view you could be playing any number of tunes.

How do we overcome this problem?

Simple – learn melodies

I’m sure you have heard the term ‘melody’ before but what does it
mean? Actually, few guitarists are clear on what a melody is; so
with that in mind let’s get to work on clearing a few things up!

Melody is the singing side of music, just as rhythm is the
dancing side. People usually think of a melody as a tune,
something that’s easy to remember, that “sticks in your mind”.

Have you ever heard a song on the radio in the morning and can’t
stop whistling it all day? Well that’s a melody you are
whistling!

Unless you are singing the melody of a song and accompanying
yourself on the guitar your audience can’t tell what song you are
playing because they can’t hear the ‘melody’, they are only
hearing the harmony of the song.

A very brief and accurate description of music could be “pitch in
time”, melody being the pitch and rhythm being the time, of
course there are other elements that go to make up music such as
dynamics, harmony etc., but the two basic elements are pitch and
time.

Instruments such as the flute, trumpet, saxophone and clarinet
are monophonic meaning they are only capable of playing one note
at a time so essentially these instruments are playing melodies
all the time. Musical instruments like the piano, guitar and
organ are polyphonic having the capability of playing more than
one note at a time.

Polyphonic instruments have the capability of playing both single
notes and chords which are simply combinations of notes played
simultaneously.

The fact that most guitar players begin to play via the chordal
route probably explains the confusion, the term melody usually
doesn’t show up on the guitar radar until some rather
embarrassing moment when someone asks you to play the melody for
“Happy Birthday” or “Jingle Bells”.

I say embarrassing because (a) you can’t say you don’t know the
tune and (b) it’s not easy to pick out a melody on the guitar if
you haven’t trained yourself to find individual sounds.

Playing melodies on the guitar:

Guitarists often talk about lead guitar and rhythm guitar, these
are ‘guitar talk’ terms, it’s wise to also know the standard
musical language of melody and harmony and how they relate to
the guitar.

Definitions:

Musicians refer to the ‘melody’, which translates to playing a
single string (one note) at a time on the guitar. Therefore in
‘guitar talk’ a lead guitarist would be playing the melody of a
song.

Listen to guitar based instrumental groups such as “The Shadows”
and “The Ventures” for excellent examples of lead guitar players
playing the melody.

Rhythm guitarists play the chords or harmony of a tune which
supports the melody.

Sonic sandwich:

To help get your head around these new musical terms and concepts
it helps to think of music like a sonic sandwich;

(a) melody on top, (b) harmony in the middle and (c) bass at the
bottom.

Now it’s time to go over to your guitar … play a single string,
follow that with another note and you have a tiny two-note
melody, add a third note and it begins to sound a little more
melodious add a few more and you have a melody.

Now it’s your turn to play melodies on the guitar.

And now I’d like to invite you to get free access to my “How To Remember 1,000 Songs” eCourse. You can download the course for free at: http://www.guitarcoaching.com

You’ll learn about hit song templates, easy chords, simple scales, red hot rhythms, and successful practice strategies in text, audio and video.

From Mike Hayes – The Guitar Coaching Guy & the Express Guitar
System

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