Check out this awesome chord progression with easy tapping melody guitar lesson from Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman. Be sure to click the link to get the tabs for the lesson so you can easily follow along.
Overview
Hey everybody how’s it going? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson. Today I want to show you a little thing that I wrote that is a mixture of chords and melody. You’re going to play a chord and then with your fretting hand tap a melody over it while that chord is ringing out. So you’re kind of pulling double duty. We’re working with the rhythm and we’re also playing little melody by tapping it out over the top. So be sure to click on the link below so that way you can get the tabs to follow along with this. So let’s get close up and take a look what we got going on.
The Chords
All right so the first thing is let’s just go over the three chords that we’re using for this. So the first one we’re using is Em7, so I’m barring my first finger across the first five strings at the seventh fret and then my second finger is going on to the eighth fret of the B/second string and my third finger is going on to the fourth fret of the D/fourth string. Then from there we’re going to move down our barre a whole step so now we’re barring at the fifth fret and we’re going to put our third finger on the seventh fret of the D string and your fourth finger on the seventh fret of the G string. Now with this, just like the first chord, (forgot to mention that we’re only strumming just the first five strings), we’re not hitting the sixth/low E string. And when we come down to this chord same thing we’re not going to strum that low E, this chord is Dsus2. Now we’re just going to take that shape for our third chord and move it down a whole step, so now we’re barring at the third fret, and then our third and fourth fingers are on the fifth fret and that is Csus2.
The Melody
So for this you’re gonna start off with the Em7 and you’re just gonna strum the chord and let it ring and then we start tapping this little melody. So this strum is on beat one and then on two we start tapping out this melody. So for the little melody that we’re tapping out we’re going to start off tapping the 12th fret of the G string and then sliding down to 11 and then doing a pull-off so when we do the pull-off the note that’s being fretted is the seventh fret over here where we’re playing the chord so you have to leave the chord so not only is it ringing out while you’re tapping the melody out but so that way some of the notes from the melody are actually going to be in the chord. So tap slide pull and then tap the 12th fret of your D string and then a pull-off and then tap 12 again and slide to 14. Just like that.
All right then we move our chord down to the Dsus2, same thing we give it a strum and start tapping. So the tapping melody here is going to be similar to what we did on the first one, tap 12, we’re starting on the G string again, so we tap 12 slide to 11 do a pull-off and then we do the same thing, we tap the 12th fret of the D string pull-off tap slide to 14 and then slide down to nine and then pull-off. So actually with that I guess we’re tap slide pull tap pull tap slide to slide to 14 back to 12 and then back to nine and then open so oh actually when we slide from 14 back to 12 we will pull-off and then go to nine.
Tapping Tips
All right, so another thing too that you want to you want to do with this is that for tapping you want to tap with your middle finger and I recommend that you do that most of the time anyway, no matter what you’re tapping, even if you’re doing you know something like this so that way you can keep a hold of that guitar pick with your thumb and your first finger so it’s ready in case you want to strum a chord or you’re going to start picking or whatever, that’s just my recommendation. So after we do the Dsus2 then we’re going to come down to our Csus2 and the tapping here is the same thing as it is on the very first chord on the Em7. So 12th fret of the G string slide to 11 pull-off and then tap to the 12th fret of the D string and then pull-off tap slide to 14. So back to the Dsus2, same thing again and then back to Em7 and this time it’s gonna be a little bit different. So this time strum and tap the twelfth fret of the G string and slide to eleven and pull-off and tap 12 on the D string, pull-off tap slide, so when we do the tap slide we slide back to 12, pull-off tap slide. All right so let’s go over the entire thing slowly.
Variations
So now you can make lots of variations on this. I just kind of condensed it down but to like stretch it out and make it longer. Like what I’ll do is I’ll play the first part and then come back to the Em7 again. Now go down to the Csus2 just like that. Once you know it and work with a little bit it’s pretty simple to play. All of the melody lines and stuff I’m playing are just right out of the scales, they’re in that key. So when you get it down you can kind of mess around and come up with your own.
So that’s all for you today, thanks for watching. If you like the video be sure to give it a thumbs up and leave me a comment down below if there’s something that you’d like to see either myself or one of the other instructors here at GuitarControl.com do in a future lesson and have a great day!
