Rhythm and Strumming Basics: Adding Melody to Chords

This lesson explores ways to add melodic movement to your chord shapes—both with the pick and with some simple fingerpicking. You will learn how play suspended chord sounds (as on the Who’s “Pinball Wizard”), plus minor chord progressions that contain descending melodic lines (as in “Stairway to Heaven”) and chord patterns with ascending melodies (as you might hear in your favorite spy movies). You will also explore the neck a little more by moving some examples to other areas of the fretboard. All these exercises will give you new confidence to add melodic movement to your chords in all sorts of contexts.

This informative guide offers written instruction, tab, and full notation, plus 4 minutes of video.

by Josh Workman