Building Your Own Fingerstyle Chord Melody

Even though it was written by a Cuban composer (Osvaldo Farrés), this song belongs in the pantheon of classic Mexican boleros like Bésame Mucho, Perfidia and Sabor a Mí. In this guitar lesson, we learn how to play the melody and chords of the famous song Quizás, Quizás, Quizás (Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps) and put them both together in different ways to create a solo guitar chord melody arrangement that suits your particular skill level. 

How to Construct a Solo Guitar Arrangement

Even though playing the melody and incorporating the chords on the same instrument at the same time as one person is a very musically sophisticated thing to do, a chord-melody arrangement (also called a solo arrangement) does not have to be difficult. Although learning the ins and outs of music theory and of course mastering techniques for fingerstyle (and especially Flamenco or Classical) guitar can take a lifetime, all the listener really demands of us is to hear the melody. Any accompaniment we can add - be it simply the root of the chord or other chord tones - will give it a more full sound and qualify as a chord melody. This is truly one of the most satisfying things to do on acoustic guitar – after all, we play a polyphonic instrument (as opposed to monophonic instruments like trumpets that can only play one note at a time), and the guitar practically screams out for us to experiment with arrangements of our own.

Start with the basics

The first step to constructing a chord melody is of course learning and knowing the melody. Everything emanates from there, but another thing to consider is the type of rhythm you would like to incorporate into the arrangement. The whole rhythmic world is our oyster here, as we can choose from so many different grooves and beats to play as the underlying rhythmic backbone of our solo. You may have heard many covers of popular songs that seem to be reimagined, and very often the way the artist makes their version sound different is by changing the rhythm from the original.

So first think about how you would strum this song if you were singing it and that will give you a clue as to what the rhythm should be. For Quizás, the sub genre of Mexican Bolero will be our starting point, but you by no means have to play this rhythm.

We can now begin to make a de facto chord melody which really is not that difficult: strumming chords in between melody notes. Every song is going to have gaps in the melody where a phrase ends, where there is a moment to catch our breath, both literally and figuratively. In these spaces, we can try to capture a piece of the rhythm that we would be strumming if we were simply playing accompaniment and singing. Sometimes this is quite enough to have a very cool solo arrangement, but we can work from this starting point to flesh out a more involved chord melody. 

Go high, then go low

As I mentioned, we definitely need to know the melody before we even get going on trying to build a solo. But once we have the melody memorized and we know what the chords are (because we worked on the rhythm and strummed the chords) we can begin to mix the two and overlap them simultaneously where possible. To do this, instead of strumming the chord (which is very often impossible to do while incorporating the melody) play the root of the chord in some kind of "logical" and even way (as in once per measure, etc.) while you play the melody on top. This is a great technique and brain exercise, but does not have to be difficult. If you've played a lot of solo guitar arrangements before you'll know that some of the best and even most complicated solo guitar arrangements incorporate this technique quite a bit – especially when we're trying to play a melody that is fast and challenging, we need to take it easy on the chord/accompaniment part and sometimes just play a single bass note. I think it makes the most sense to start using the root of each chord first just to remind us what the chord really is before we start adding other notes from the chord, especially in the bass voice. 

Fill in the gaps

As you know if you've seen any of my guitar tutorials, my next step is to use what knowledge you have of chords (which could be very basic or super advanced where you can "see" the chord over the entire neck). Here is where things can get really interesting and experimentation can be super rewarding and fun. If we want to stay true to the original song, we have to keep the melody and unless we want to get really jazzy with weird substitutions, we are going to keep the chords as well. Remember before we had the option of strumming the chord - which we still do - but now we might be ready to play other notes inside the chord and even make up our own scale phrases.

Let's do it

In the comprehensive tutorial below, I guide you through all of the above steps and more and show you all your options for playing your own version of Quizás that will match your skill level - whatever that might be. Being able to construct solos like this is a must for any classical, fingerstyle, flamenco and steel string acoustic guitarist - add it's one of the best ways ever to really apply your knowledge of the fretboard and music theory: 

I love these classic Boleros and have tons of courses on this and other songs and topics that you should also love if you've read this far!