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More Than a Melody
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By Pete Madsen
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Add slurs, harmony notes, and other tricks to make a basic melody like "Jingle Bells" rock
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Tune Up
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Ah, the smell of scotch pine and chestnuts roasting on an open fire. It makes you want to break out the old Yule log—or maybe play a holiday tune on your guitar. But if you’re tired of fishing around on the fretboard and plunking out basic melodies, we’ll show you how to play “Jingle Bells” with pizzazz by adding spicy little slides, harmonies, and bends. Let’s make those sleigh bells swing!
We Wish You a Merry C Scale
We’ll play “Jingle Bells” in the key of C, so let me introduce you to the C-Major Scale, below, also called a C scale. The C scale consists of seven notes: C D E F G A B. There are many ways to play this scale, but I’ve laid it out on the first and second strings so the notes stand out. Many guitar solos are based around the first two strings, so it’s good to get familiar with where the notes are.
Use a pick to play the C scale in downstrokes. When you feel comfortable with that, alternate your picking: start with a downstroke on the first note, use an upstroke on the next, and continue alternating down- and upstrokes. Alternate picking helps you increase your speed and add more flavor to your guitar playing.
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C-Major Scale
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Play the Basic “Jingle Bells”
Play through the bare-bones melody to the chorus of that classic, “Jingle Bells,” below. You probably have this tune so ingrained in your head that you could find the melody on the guitar by yourself, simply by trial and error.
There is an important lesson there: if you can sing or hum a melody, it will be much easier to play it. Don’t worry if you don’t like the way you sound; believe me, I was not gifted with a beautiful voice. No one has to listen unless you want them to. But it will help you with your guitar playing.
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"Jingle Bells" Chorus
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Slide into a Melody Note
You can play the basic melody, and everything is grooving along fine, but maybe you want to spice things up and have some fun. Fair enough. Let’s take the first line of the chorus and add a little slide in the last bar, sliding into the “way.” Play the First and Third Line, below. To slide into a note, you need to maintain pressure on the string as your finger slides from one fret to another. If you overshoot the note or end up a little short, just keep practicing; your accuracy will improve.
Notice that you played the same E note on “way” as in the basic “Jingle Bells,” but you played it on the fifth fret of the second string instead of the open first string. You can play the E note either way, but you can only slide into a fretted note. That’s why we’re playing it on the second string for this example.
If you want to further embellish that long held note on “way,” you can add vibrato (see “Technique Tips: Vibrato,” on the next page) after you slide into it.
Since this line is repeated as the third line, you can now play half the chorus. Congratulations! If you like how this sounds, try sliding into other notes in the rest of the melody. But if you’re up for more of a challenge, move on to the next section.
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First and Third Line
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Harmonize the Melody with Open Strings
Continue with the slide idea in the Second Line of the chorus. The first three notes (“Oh what fun”) of this four-bar example are very quick grace-note slides. Grace notes are so short that you can’t even count them, so slide your finger very quickly from the fifth to the sixth fret of the second string. If you securely plant your fretting-hand thumb behind the neck of the guitar, you’ll have a pivot point that will help you execute this repeating slide.
Two-string harmonies are a nice way to fatten up your sound. In the second measure of this example, play the E note on both the open first string and the second string, fifth fret. In the next measure, the melody moves down to the third fret, but continue to play the open E string to create a harmony. Experiment with different harmonies on these two strings. They work particularly well in the key of E: play the first string open as you play notes from the E scale on the second string (as in Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself” or the guitar line from David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel”).
This example ends up with a long slide from the third to the eighth fret on the second string. This might take a little practice if you’re not used to performing long slides. Or you can use your ring finger to slide from the fifth to the eighth fret.
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Second Line
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Most of us start out on the guitar by figuring out a few
basic chords to strum. But making the leap to picking
out melodies can be daunting. There's so much to learn
about scales, new fingerings, and the murky realm above
the fifth fret. Whether you want to play fiddle tunes,
song melodies, the blues, or just jam along to your favorite
tunes, the Acoustic Guitar Lead and Melody Basics
lesson book will help you make a smooth transition from
accompanist to soloist. With eight concise, in-depth lessons,
and transcriptions to nine complete songs, you will focus
your practice time in immediately productive and continually
inspiring ways.
Click here to learn about Acoustic Guitar Lead and Melody Basics
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