Phrasing

Pick 4 chords and develop a melody over them.

4 bars only and keep it simple.

Once you have your melody start thinking about what you can do to target specific notes.

Before you do though, read these quick excerpts from Wikipedia so you get a better understanding of what is meant by phrasing.

The next sentence might just tell you everything.

(The art of phrasing is essential for expressiveness in music.)

Expressiveness is what we are looking for.

Wikipedia excerpts

Try and read these a few times before moving on.

Now that you are possibly a bit confused, go ahead and pick up your guitar. The attempt at phrasing will give you a better understanding than mere words…

Use bends, slides, vibrato, bent note vibrato, pinch harmonics, pinch harmonics and bent notes, pinch harmonics and vibrato, pinch harmonic on a bent note plus vibrato.

Spend a lot of time here, up to a day or two on the same melody.

Record it into your phone and listen back.

What do you hear? Can you do it better?

Once you are pretty solid on your newly phrased melody, try some variations by changing a chord or two in the progression but with the overall sound and feel to the original melody because if not you will get a new melody and what we are aiming for here in this lesson are variations of the same melody.

Compose several melodies.

Change register (octave) both high and low to see what comes of it.

Use dynamics to get a different feel for the melody.

Remember…melody is always king.

You can have great harmony but without a melody it doesn’t work by itself.

On the other hand… a melody can always stand alone.

Think about acapella singers, you never hear them singing chords, they HAVE to sing melodies.

Think about the Gregorian chants in the churches in the early days of music, you will hear only melodies and never chords.

You can’t just have harmony (chords), you always need a melody to call it a piece of music.

Phrase your melody to death!

It will be well worth your time and effort!

Recap

Pick 4 chords.

Compose a simple melody.

Phrase it to death.

Come up with variations.

…

Dont know your chords? Go here…