JONNY MOSS GUITAR
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GUITAR BASICS BLOG

Melody Playing

20/12/2017

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​Being able to listen to the sounds we make whilst playing the guitar is paramount - this is one of the most overlooked skills and one of the most difficult to develop, but essential to good playing.

“Good playing?" What’s that? In this case it is also recognising, locating and emphasising the melody in a piece of music. It’s a good idea to think of the guitar as a string trio fulfilling the roles of cello, viola and violin, with the violin playing the melody on top. If we don’t, it all becomes a bit muddy. Locating the bass is really straightforward, separating the melody from the harmony can be more of a challenge, but easily done when we are more familiar with the music. If we sing along too it really helps emphasise the melody line.

That’s the ideal, but physically and technically making the melody stand out is not easy. I created this simple exercise to focus the power of the RH fingers, four playing softly and one pulling harder - it’s great to encourage finger independence of the right hand - listening to the sounds our fingers produce is essential though, making sure the melody is coming through strongly.

This doesn’t take into account, though, the role of the rest stroke in giving more weight and body to a note and very useful it is when playing the melody… I’ll look at that in the next video.
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    Guitar Basics


    Over the years I've developed techniques and picked up some gems from influential teachers such as Craig Ogden, Manus Noble and Gary Ryan that can make playing so much more pleasurable, snippets that can help make the seemingly unachievable, achievable. 

    My general approach to good technique is one based on relaxed posture and focused effort. The reason we work on technique is to allow the music to be freed from the score and expressed by the guitarist with ease and confidence.

    Lots of students have asked if I could record the exercises we regularly use and this blog is the result.

    Blog introduction can be read here.

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  • Introduction
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