Greensleeves Chord Melody

[gstriph]

Hi Andrew

Since I’ve done O2J already, I’ve been working on Scarborough Fair and Greensleeves from the reading course and really wanted to take up your challenge to add the chords. I’ve pretty much figured out that just strumming the chord listed in the music doesn’t work (at least for the usual open position chords). By don’t work, I mean that if the melody note is buried within the chord rather than standing out as the highest pitched note, the melody is lost.

So looking at the first few bars…

Dm — no problem, esp if played 221x – then the highest pitched note is the melody note F.

F — no problem played 2010 – the A is the top note.

C — with a melody note of G — this is the first issue. A “normal” C 0003 misses the melody. C as 0033 gets it but sounds wrong as the higher C is heard. I could play it on low G as 003x or 543x?? the last is at least a C chord with a G as the highest pitched note on a low G ukulele.

Am — with a melody note of low C… 5453 (i.e. the F#m movable chord…played down)?

Am I thinking about this wrong?

Thanks,
Jerry

[Andrew]

Hi Jerry, actually the easiest way to tackle this would be to reference @planetfink ‘s performance. Compare what you’ve got to hers and if you’re still stuck let me know.

[Andrew]

Ok, now that I’ve had lunch I can think again, LOL. So let me try to answer this again:

I forgot how I wrote the harmony, but it looks like I made it easy to combine everything. I put a red box in the order to play it. Every chord highlights the melody, but some chords may just be 2 notes. So not really a chord, but a double stop. Anyways, you apply the above method to the entire piece.

[gstriph]

I did work on the chord melody of Greensleeves during February. Here’s a recording. I’m trying some new strings for low G with wound G and C strings — I apologize for the twanging and scraping. It was fun trying to voice chords keeping the melody on the top and using more of the low G string.

Jerry

[Andrew]

Sounds great, Jerry! Well done putting it together 🙂

[Author]

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