Make Your Playing More Melodic

Something that you might find yourself humming or whistling in the shower.

To make this even trickier: how many melodies can you play that weren’t written for guitar?

When my teacher asked me this, I was stumped. I realised that so much of what I’ve learned was guitar-focused. Riffs, licks, solos, chord progressions… A lot of very cool, but typical guitar stuff. (In music theory terms: a lot of minor pentatonic stuff.)

But of course, you don’t need to limit yourself to what seems comfortable or logical on the fretboard. You can play anything you like on a guitar.

And so I started looking for learning beautiful melodies to learn, anywhere I could find them. In classical music, jazz, video games, film scores, pop songs…

This really helped me see how I could play whatever I wanted. It helped me break away from the typical guitar ‘boxes’ on the fretboard, that we often fall into. What’s more, I started to absorb all the melodic fragments all those tunes were made up of, which slowly but surely came through in my playing. It made me a more melodic player.

This course will help you do the same. You’ll learn 11 melodies by ear. I chose them for very specific reasons:

• These melodies are played on violins, cello’s, piano, voice, horns… Anything but guitar.
• The melodies are different from the typical guitar-lines we like to play, opening up your mind to the possibilities of the fretboard.
• You will expand your melodic vocabulary with some of the greatest melodies every written.
• The songs are from a range of genres: classical music, modern jazz, film scores, 90s pop songs and catchy jazz tunes from the 50s.
• All the tunes are either super catchy or simply beautiful melodies.

Of course, you’ll learn all of these songs by ear, using the interactive TAB system you might know from my other ear training courses:

In short, the course is a really fun way of making your playing more melodic.