Ukulele Melody and Chord Arranging Tips

Getting Started

Creating Melody and Chord Arrangements, in theory are as simple as harmonizing the melody with a chord. In practice it is a little more involved, but not much more.

Here is a page of tips and guidelines for creating your own arrangements.

A few thing you should know before starting:

• The notes of the Ukulele Fingerboard and what they look like in standard music notation. TAB will NOT help.
• The ability to identify the notes of a chord. Chord Spelling, A C major chord is C E G, a G7 chord is G B D F

Melody and chord Guidlines

You do not have to play a chord for every melody note.

Chords can also played before or after the melody.

Example from measure 2 of the Beatles classic Yesterday.

Play chords for dotted quarter notes and long duration notes and when there is a chord change.

Add melody notes if needed and wanted.

If melody is an arpeggio sustain notes to get chord.

If only one melody note is changing in a chord play the changed note while sustaining the previous unchanged notes of the chord.

Example from first measure of Yesterday.

Change all diminished triads to dim 7th 4-part chords.

Augmented triads to can be played as a 7#5.

Do not avoid the effectiveness of triads

Use chord substitutions to fit the style.

Example from Autumn Leaves.

The original chord for this measure is the I chord of the key (Bbmaj7). A III chord, a diatonic sub is substituted and its V chord added. Also creates a nice chromatic movement the IV chord.

A full melody and chord solo arrangement for Autumn Leaves is available on the Online Lessons - Repertoire page.

Look for places for parallel, oblique, similar and contrary motion in your chord voicings.

Double stops, octaves, intervals, arpeggios, sequences and chord scales.

Example from Walk Don't Run. A song written by jazz great Johnny Smith and made famous by the Ventures.

The full melody and chord solo arrangement available on the Online Lessons - Repertoire page.

Chromatic passing chords and fills.

Close chord voicings. The re-entrant tuning of the ukulele gives you this automatically.

Incorporate open strings in to chord voicings

Free form chord voicings. Chords that do not fall into the open position, movable form or 4-part catagories.

Alterations, upper partials (chord extensions) and substitutions. Root to 9, b9, #9, third to 11, #11, fifth to 13, b5, #5 to fit the style

Alterations should not change the chords harmonic function.

Embellishments - slurs, hammer-ons, pull-offs, tremelo, etc...

Idiomatic cliches - These are things such a bends and glissandos (slides) in blues.

Alternate chord voicings - A melody of a ninth can be harmonized by raising the root of a chord 2 frets or lowering the third of a minor chord one fret and the third of a major seventh or seventh chord two frets.

A melody of an eleventh can be harmonized by raising the third of a minor chord two frets and the third of a major seventh or seventh chord one fret. Or, lowering the fifth of a seventh, minor seventh or major seventh chord two frets.

Learn the critical notes of a chord such as the thirds and sevenths of major minor and sevenths chords. Without these notes in the chord you loose the essence of the chord.

The two most critical notes are the melody and the seventh of a chord.

Leaving out the root and fifth of a chord implies 5, 6 and 7 part harmony. This is very useful on an instrument like the a ukulele.

for more information on building ukulele chords see my books from my Advanced Guide to Chords and Progressions series.

Intros, Endings and Interludes equal an arrangement.

Theme variations and re-harmonizations

Original Hand Written Chart (page 1

Click on image for larger view

FAKE BOOKS

Here are a Few of the fake books that I Have and use a lot for repertoire.

The Real Book - C Edition (Sixth Edition) Fakebook (spiral bound) for C instrument. With melody, standard notation and chord names. Series: Hal Leonard Instrumental Fake Books. 462 pages. Published by Hal Leonard. (HL.240221) See more info...

The Real Book - Volume 2 (C Instruments) C Instruments. By Various Composers. Fake Book (Includes melody line and chords). Size 8.5x11 inches. 416 pages. Published by Hal Leonard. (240222) See more info...

The Best Fake Book Ever - C Edition - 3rd Edition Fake book for voice and C instrument. With vocal melody, lyrics and chord names. Series: Hal Leonard Fake Books. 856 pages. Published by Hal Leonard. (HL.290239) See more info...

The New Real Book - C Edition Fakebook (spiral bound) for C instrument. With melody, chord names, introductory text and black & white photos. 438 pages. Published by Sher Music Company. (SR.NRB1C) See more info...

More fake books can be found here...