Melody Chord Playing System

Starting with the inversions of the major triad, this book teaches you how to choose a chord voicing so the highest note in the chord matches the melody line of a song, and how to incorporate non-chordal tones. That's a pretty simple description, and the book is simply presented - but it's still a great book. You'll need to know the basics of standard notation, because this is really about how to work from fake books - taking a single note melody line with the chord progression indicated, it develops how to select voicings to create a complete solo guitar arrangement. The music examples are simple and old (On Top of Old Smokey, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, etc.), but these techniques can be applied to any song in any style. The most obvious uses are for 'standards', but you could apply them to everything from Beatles to blues with good results. It moves along more slowly than more contemporary books - it's almost 40 years old - but the explanations are easy to follow, and the results of each new concept are immediately applied in the examples.