Pete Martin

Chord Melody and Drop 2 Chords for Mandolin Pete Martin

Chord melody is a very common sound in jazz. There are many books, videos and web sites to teach this for pianists and guitarists, but not for mandolin. Thus the need for this book. Chord melody is often played using drop 2 chord voicings (see chapter 1 for an explanation of what these are). Drop 2 works very well, so anyone wanting to get into this important part of jazz should study drop 2 chord voicings. In chord melody, the melody note is on top and the rest of the notes of the chord are underneath the melody note. This makes the melody easy to hear and understand and allows us plenty of color to add beneath the melody. In this book, we will learn drop 2 chord voicings first, sections 1 through 4. Section 5 will show how to use drop 2 chords for chord melody arrangements and chord soloing. This book has written music notation and tablature. They are both written for 5 string mandolin (tuned CGDAE low to high). However, one can easily use these examples for 4 or 8 stringed mandolins (tuned GDAE low to high), by just ignoring the 5th string notes in the tab and anything written below the open G string on 4 or 8 stringed mandolins.