Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Chords and Melody to Twinkle, Twinkle

The melody is sort of the story line of a song. If we play the melody on top of the chord progression, or the unspoken backbone of the song, we start to get a much more complete picture of what is going on. It really sounds like two people are playing this together.

Listen as I play the chords with upper octave melody to Twinkle Twinkle on the kalimba.

Here is the Tab for the chords and melody together.

And here is the KTabS file for the chords and melody together.

The melody notes are usually coming twice as fast as the chords. Think of the chords as ushering in each new bit of the melody, but standing back and letting the melody do the work. Also notice that the chords are on the opposite side of the kalimba from the melody notes - this is a property of the kalimba, tuned as it is. In other words, if Hugh Tracey didn't get the idea of this from some African tuning, this approach to the kalimba reflects his genius.

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