Some melodies just have a timeless quality and Londonderry Air is one such melody. A traditional Irish Air, the melody can be traced back to the early 1600’s, albeit with varying theories of origination from the musical historians (there is a theory that suggests it originates from lowland Scotland but I’ll not push that one) . It’s testament to how a melody can have a life and a travel a journey through the decades and across continents. It has been been played by all varieties of instruments and will be for some time to come I’m sure.

Learning how to improvise is an ambition of many guitarists and while it may seem at the outset a very difficult thing to achieve there are approaches to the subject that will help you get started. One of these is guide-tone lines.

In the attached guitar video I’m creating guide-tone lines for fingerstyle guitar over standard chord progression movements which I then go onto embellish. A guide-tone line is a melodic line which comprises of tones from the chords of the chord progression being followed. True guide-tone lines only use the 3rd and 7th of the chord but more sophisticated lines will make use of all of the chord tones.

One of the hardest things about improvisation is that it often takes place within a certain structure, for example a pre-determined chord progression. This can be harder to tackle than “free improvisation” where there is no pre-determed structure. By identifying melodic lines within a pre-determined chord progression you will start to identify possible motifs that could be developed. It’s also a good practice for developing your song writing skills. You’ll notice from the attached notation that the lines I’m identifying are not necessarily the top lines, in measures 5&6 the guide tone line is an internal line. In the attached video I’m using various ideas to develop the guide tone lines………….for a later blog.

If you want to try and add some of your own accompanyment to the lines in the attached notation, try play the odd root note from the chords. You don’t have to play everyone, just enough to support the guide-tone line which should already be implying the harmony.

Some traditional Scottish melodies to ease you into the New Year, kicking off with Ae Fond Kiss…

A Disney double. When You Wish upon a Star and as long as There’s Christmas. Brings back fond memories of the children when they were younger watching Disney movies at Christmas Time.

We were invited up to a friend’s cottage recently near Aviemore in Scotland. The cottage has been in their family since the 1960’s so I thought it worthy of a tune. I wrote “Knock Cottage” while thinking of family, friendship, Scottish Mountains and flowing Scottish rivers.

The first thing I do when starting an arrangement is to learn the melody and pick a good key to play it on the guitar. I’m going along with Joe Pass’s chosen key of D. Below is the first 8 measures of When You Wish Upon A Star

I’ve started working on an arrangement of the classic song “When You Wish Upon A Star”. Trawling through youtube for some inspiration, I came across this beautiful version by Joe Pass

Something to help you chill…..The Nearness of You

CLICK HERE to access EXCLUSIVE CONTENT  in my  ‘BEYOND TABS’ guitar course

Carrying on from measures 1-4, measure 5-8 follow a similar pattern. Go to The Nearness of You guitar chords measures 1-4. Notice in the 5th measure that the F#m7 chord moves to F7. The most obvious chord movement would be to B7. The substitution of B7 with F7 gives a  nice root movement. This type of chord substitution is used extensively by Jazz musicians.

Just came across this great Donna Hightower version of the classic song “The Nearness of You”. When I’m learning a song, as I am with The Nearness of You, I always like to listen to different versions for inspiration. Listening to different versions also gives you a strong sense of the melody which is all important. You can check out some of my other recomended listening for this song along with some background info in my Nearness of You you guitar Song Lesson page