chordmelody
Chordmelody, often written with a hyphen as chord-melody, is a style of arranging or playing in which a single instrument presents both the melody and the accompanying harmony at the same time. On guitar and other chordal instruments, players craft voicings that support the tune’s melodic line while implying the chord progression. The technique is most associated with jazz, where soloists can perform standard tunes without additional accompanists, but it also appears in other genres and on piano, where pianists voice the melody with chordal accompaniment around it.
In practice, chord-melody involves selecting voicings that place or imply the melody note within a chord, using
Arranging standards for chord-melody requires analyzing the changes, preserving the tune’s identity, and choosing voicings that
Notable practitioners include jazz guitarists such as Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessel, George Van Eps,