Free Jazz Guitar Lessons

Functional chord melody is a term I use for the ability to make up arrangements on the fly, to use all of the musical information you know and blend it together into an expressive and cohesive musical statement. This technique is most commonly used in solo, duo with bass, and trio with bass and drum settings.

• Melody is the MOST important thing, chords should NEVER interfere with the phrasing and flow
• Just like your solos, the theme and the texture of the statement should develop
• While chord melody by definition sounds as if chords and lines are always simultaneous, it is actually a variety of techniques:

• Diatonic: Playing scalic ideas or harmonized voicings (often referred to as modes)
• Inner voice movement: Moving tones (commonly called voice leading) inside a voicing is a great way to create movement and direction without a bunch of new harmonic data being thrust on the tune or listener. First try the 5th. Move it chromatically up to the 6th and back. I'm sure you'll recognize having heard this in many people's playing. If it is a dominant 7th chord, go up to that tone from the 5th and back down (maybe to the flatted 5th?). The major 7? +11? Minor major 7? etc. With a dominant 7th chord, another effective movement in use is the b9 to #9. You probably play it in blocks all of the time.
• Parallel: Chord voicings always work when moved in parallel fashion and are very easy on the guitar! Smooth resolution is affected if all of the notes resolve in a uniform way. While chromatic resolution is the smoothest and easiest, try other sequential groupings.
• Harmonic: This is a large group, one that consists of substitutions, chromatic (parallel and other) and superimposed progressions. For "function" it is important that you NEVER interrupt the flow or try to stuff so much in that you arrest the melodic and rhythmic flow. Harmony is color and should be your last consideration.
  

Examples:
An Aminor chord: The first harmonic thing would be to create motion from and back to that chord. The most obvious is Aminor to E7 and back to Aminor. Or A minor to Bb7 to Aminor. In the last case, it contained what is often referred to as the tritone substitution. Regardless of its name, I'm sure you recognize its relativity to the parallel concept with only one different note. It is also contained in the moving voice section as the notes in the chord except the root is the same as the chord it is replacing and its 5th to 6th motion is the same as the b9 and #9 of E7 (the original chord)

You might also create progressions:
Aminor, F#m7b5, E7b9
Aminor, G13, F13, E7
Aminor, Cmaj7, B7#5, Bb13

And that's before you use bass motion (ascending and descending, chromatic, diatonic, whole tone), extend the progression, modulate or any one of a number of techniques you are probably already using in other songs.

With these ideas in mind, and a desire to vary and develop your statement, play the attached chord melody of Days Of Wine & Roses.

How to read the charts
Because there are no bar lines or exact rythmic values to the melody notes, you MUST know the song. As these are all commonly played standards, find at least two versions by some of your favourite artists. This will give you a good idea of the basic melody of the song, as well as ideas for personal interpretation at a later date. (If Miles Davis' band played it, it is probably the most commonly referred to version).