Welcome to Vinny Raniolo's Introducing Chord Melody. In this lesson, Vinny will take you deep into developing ways to play chord melody arrangements. To develop this melodic and harmonic freedom, Vinny takes four songs and creates practice ideas to demonstrate useful chord voicings. Your knowledge of the fretboard will improve and you'll have the tools to continually challenge yourself and create your own chord melody ideas for playing other songs.

A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on the DVD. each tune is taught phrase by phrase and played slowly on a split-screen.

Titles include: Four Leaf Clover, All Of Me, Moonglow and These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You)

Running time: 111 minutes- Level 2/3 - Detailed tab/music PDF file on the DVD

Review: Not on guitarist Vinny Raniolo’s watch. No longer will the congenial “Four Leaf Clover” get looked over, passively. Instead, the timeless standard joins three others as demonstrative workhorses that bring to life how to get the chords under your fingers to interact with a melody line. In other words: “Introducing Chord Melody.” After first breaking in the valuable technique with a series of warm-up exercises, Raniolo jazzfully guides you out into open waters once charted by Billie, Ella and Benny, and sailed by your fellow fretsmen Joe Pass, Kenny Burrell and George Benson. That’s where the line between practical application (single notes, chords, chord voicings) and gorgeous expression blurs tremendously. Just as sumptuous now, each classic example comes with its own fine details, be that the bluesy bridge swinging across “Moonglow” or some of the most cottony E flat, C minor and F minor chords you’ll ever hear put to use floating “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You).” For daredevils, there’s that finger-busting A minor voicing in the midst of “All of Me.” – Dennis Rozanski/Blues Rag