If this chord proves too difficult, recordings by jazz piano greats, such as Evans, and F. The latter is difficult, but worth the effort.
try holding your fretting hand out in front of Art Tatum, and Thelonious Monk.
To get both C and F with your 2nd finger, place you— palm towards your body—then spread
• You can take the lap piano concept one the tip of your finger above both notes, then try your thumb and fingers as far apart as you can step further by actually adapting piano music to touch your fretboard. That’s right: Ignore the and visualize your thumb playing Bb on the to the guitar. Seek out the sheet music to one fourth and fifth strings and just go for the wood.
sixth string and your pinky playing the high E
of your favorite songs and try to play the piano Done right, this trick will let you nail both notes on the first string at the 12th fret. If you can part. (Remember to transpose everything up one with relative ease, leaving your 3rd finger free wrap your mind around that, you can probably octave, because the guitar sounds an octave low-to perform other harmonic or melodic duties.
wrap your hand around the chord. If it still er than it’s written.) At first, concentrate solely The harmony heats up in measure 6, thanks seems hopeless, try plugging Ex. 3 into measure on the treble-clef part, then the bass. Before to a descending bass line beneath the melody’s 19. The Cmaj9 is still a stretch, but most hands putting the parts together, take one final step: repeating E s and a reharmonization based on will find it playable.
Play the song’s melody line and the bass line (the the new bass line. Why use these particular Now, take a look at the eighth-note chord se-bass clef’s lowest line) together—just the two chords? With the bass and melody lines in place, quence at the end of measure 20. (Because this parts, without all the notes that go in between.
these chords simply fit and sound agreeable.
passage is a “fill” and not part of the song’s (This step gives you a better sense of how the Bm11-Bb7b5-Am7- Ab6#5 is another possible melody, it should be played quietly to set it apart.) bass- and treble-clef parts will ultimately fit to-harmonization. Experiment with other chords This passage differs from the rest of the arrange-gether.) Once you can accomplish this last step, and see what you can come up with.
ment in that it is in “block chord” style (each put all the pieces together. If necessary, you can In measure 8, plant a half-barre across melody note is supported by a chord), whereas take liberties—such as leaving out notes that strings 2, 3, and 4 before sounding beat one’s C.
most of this arrangement is in “free lead” or “free are doubled within a chord or editing out dec-This will let the C ring over beat two’s chord. (A melody” style (the melody moves independently orative musical embellishments.
similar move is required to execute measure 24.) above the chords). Block-chord voicings can be After all that hard work, you may find that Plotting your fretting-hand fingering carefully a very useful arranging tool. Ex. 4 illustrates the only some passages are physically possible on is extremely important in chord-melody—fin-first two measures of “Nobody Knows the Trou-the guitar, but the parts that are playable will gering can make the difference between “un-ble I’ve Seen” arranged in block chords.
give you a fresh, non-guitaristic perspective on playable” and “playable.”
The arrangement’s final note is rendered by how music can be arranged. g Measures 9-12 again utilize a descending way of an artificial harmonic. To accomplish this, line beneath a fairly static melody (similar to fret F at the 1st fret, then place the tip of your measure 6), but this time the line is in a higher picking-hand index finger directly above the octave, making it heard not so much as a bass 20th fret—the fret itself, not the wood. Touching line but as a moving line that changes the basic the string very lightly with your extended index C major chord sound to Cmaj7, C6, then back finger, pluck the string with your thumb. Take to C—a useful move whenever you have a major care to hit the harmonic spot on—if the fingered chord that lasts for two measures.
F sounds, it will ruin the C major arpeggio.
Beginning with the quarter-note pickup at A few final tips:
the end of measure 16, I’ve bumped the melody
• Make sure to play the melody louder than Ex. 3
Ex. 4
Cmaj9
Am7
öj
ö
ö
Cmaj7
C6
Fmaj7
F6
Cmaj7
Am7
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ö .
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ä ú
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ööö ööö ö.
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let ring - - - - - - -
12
8 8
12
5
8
10
12
12
12 12
12
10
5
12 8
5
6
10
12
10
T
12
12
5
T
12 5
5
9
10
12
12
A
12
5
A
10 7
5
7
10
10
10
B
B
7
8
5
Reckless Persistence
early any song has potential as a chord-melody piece. Songs from the jazz canon, folk tunes, and old and new pop songs can all work well in this format. When choos-N
ing songs to arrange, don’t worry too much about what’s playable. If you want to play a piece of music badly enough, you’ll find a way to render it on the guitar—even if it means employing guerrilla tactics such as tapping, harmonics, and non-standard tunings.
Tuck Andress’ cover of Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish” (a solo-guitar track from the Tuck & Patti album Dream) is a great example of this. At a guitar clinic, Andress said he worked on the arrangement for more than ten years before recording it. Andress’ arrangement includes all the elements of Wonder’s original—the bass line, keyboard parts, horn parts, and the vocal line! Most guitarists wouldn’t have gone to such trouble, but something about the song turned Andress on so much that he kept after it until he could play it. (For an in-depth look at Andress’ unique, multi-layered style, check out
“A Private Lesson with the Amazing Tuck Andress” in the April ’88 GP and “The Reckless Precision of Tuck Andress” in the Feb. ’91 issue.) —AL