Hi Gang,

Inspired by Combo’s great rendition of Who’ll Stop The Rain, where he combined the chords and melody into an instrumental arrangement, I figured I could probably start adding a little guidance on how to go about this.

A Chord Solo is an instrumental arrangement of a song that incorporates the melody, the harmony (chords), as well as the rhythm (strumming or fingerpicking patterns) into a single guitar part. In order to do this, you must have all 3 parts very clearly defined in your head.

First, you should be able to strum or pick through the chord progression as an accompaniment to the vocal part (the melody). Then you need to be able to play the melody alone, as if you had someone else playing the chords. You must have a very clear idea of the timing of every note, knowing exactly which beat of the measure it is on. This helps you determine whether a note is picked down or up, as notes on the beats (1, 2, 3, 4) will be downstrokes and notes between the beats (on the ‘ands’) will be upstrokes, at least as far as a strumming arrangement is concerned.

Once you have these things organized, you strum through the chords and when there is a melody note that needs to be played, you focus the strum on just the string that that melody note is on. It is usually fine to hit 1 or 2 of the neighboring strings as well, as long as the melody note is a little accented. Simply aiming your strum for the correct string creates this accent.

Many of the Play Through segments of lessons in the TARGET Program are good examples of Chord Solos. Once you have a good understanding of the rhythm parts to a song, all you really might need is a little help with the melody. I looked back at some of the TARGET songs and decided to add a lead sheet (just the chords and melody) to some good songs to start this with. Proud Mary jumped out at me as a great candidate for students to work on this technique. Take a look at the attachment Proud Mary - Lead Sheet, and see what you can do.

Neil