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One of the most common questions that I get from students is: “Jonny, how do I make a melody sound more interesting”?

They’re not asking about fills.
They’re not asking about runs.
They’re asking how to make the melody itself sound better.

Well, this is called melodic embellishment, and it’s something that pretty much every pro musician does.

They almost never play the melody exactly as it was written.

And to clarify, I’m not talking about changing the rhythm.

When I play a melody, I have about five tried-and-true embellishment techniques that I use to decorate the melody.

And it doesn’t matter the song or style that I’m playing… They are universal techniques, and they just work.

That’s why I can make songs “sound good” on the spot. I just rinse and repeat!

In this week’s Quick Tip, I’m going to show you how to use these five techniques over one of the most classic tunes of all time.

After you watch the video, you’ll have five practical embellishment techniques that you can use immediately in your playing.

You could come up with 1,000 melodic embellishments that sound OK, or they only work some of the time.

Or you could learn 5 that sound really good, all the time.

This is the difference between a composer and an improviser.

An improviser has a handful of techniques that they can pull out at any moment, and they just sound good.

I call these “stock techniques”, and melodic embellishments are no different.

What are some songs that you want to “dress up” a little bit?

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