Unit 4: The Melody Maker

Section A

Before we kick off, Check out the full tab for the song in the Guitar Tabs section. This is essentially a loop with lots of musical layers on top of the core guitar part. In the Guitar Tabs section is the loop, which you repeat 3 times for the entire song.

As we've covered all the theory in previous units we can just get straight into this track, and break down each section. When learning a fingerstyle piece like this, it really is the only way to do it. One section at a time, bringing chords and melody together. So, we'll start with the first 8 bars.

As you can see, the chords are pretty simple! The D6 is really just based on a D major chord, but Thomas plays it slightly differently, suggesting to us that it's really a D6. You can substitute this chord anytime for the D major though, and vice versa.

The magic in the track, however, is not the basic chords. It is the way we play them, with the melody notes and slap in place. Look out for the slap (x's) and the highest notes being the melody on the tab.

Section A Continued

The good news is that the next 4 bars have the exact same chords, we're just working with a slightly variable melody. So again, these are the chords:

So follow along with Thomas in the video, and pay close attention to the tab to get this section bang on.

Section B

We now move into the next section, introducing a new set of chords and a very cool melody line. First up, let's look at the chord chart:

Once again, we have pretty simple chords to work with, but some very cool theory at work here. You'll notice that all the chords fit neatly into the key of G major, apart from this B7 chord, which is another "borrowed" chord. This is a great songwriting tool though, and you'll hear it everywhere from Folk music, to Soul, Pop and Modern Rock (Creep by Radiohead, Plug In Baby by Muse & Same Old Blues by Freddie King are three awesome examples of it).

This is a really fun one to try in your own songwriting, so keep it in mind! Also, check out some of those songs above to see if you can spot them!

Section B Continued

The second half of the B section continues the same theme but ends with an A7 chord and Cmaj7 to turn it around and point back to the G major. Here is the chart:

Keep an eye on the subtle changes in the melody as well, as it does slightly change towards the end of this section!

All Together!

The final part of the loop simply returns to the opening part, like this:

The good news is that this stays exactly the same as the first section, so we can simply tag this on the end to get the structure of the song perfect. We're now ready to take a look at the full chart, and start piecing it all together!

There we have it! We have the whole track together! Please take your time with this, as it's a monster track and such a fingerstyle statement track! With these skills under your belt, you can now start arranging your tunes, working on other fingerstyle pieces and have a firm grasp of how it all works theory wise! I'm excited that you are now at this stage. Let it absorb, be kind to yourself as you work through it, and before you know it, you'll have these skills in the bag (ready for Level 3!).