Acoustic Guitar Harmony - How To Harmonize Melodies On Your Guitar

Playing melody on your acoustic guitar sounds great when you apply harmony to it. This can be done in many various ways, but first what exactly do we mean by harmony and how does it apply to your acoustic guitar playing.

In a nutshell, harmony is the combination of simultaneously sounded musical notes. In other words, playing two or more notes at the same time on your guitar, or at the same time between several guitars, creates a harmony.

Harmony on your acoustic guitar can be applied in many ways. For instance, anytime you play a chord on your guitar, you are creating a harmony, as you are sounding several notes at the same time.

Today I would like to show you how to easily apply harmonies to any melody on your acoustic guitar. The type of harmony we will use are thirds. 

What are thirds I hear you say. Well, before applying a harmony, we need a key to work in. Lets go with C Major which contains the following notes:

I have highlighted both the C and E notes above, as when played together, they create the harmony of a third. In other words they are what we call a third apart. 

However there are other notes that are a third apart in our key as well. In fact, if you count up three from any note in the key above you will get a third.

So here is the key of C Major harmonized in thirds.

The top row is the key of C Major, and the bottom row, in red, is the corresponding harmony of a third to each note in the key:

The diagram below shows you how thirds look on the top two strings of your guitar:This is all good, but not very useful if you don’t know how to relate this harmony to your acoustic guitar. In the table above, you have the notes of C major and below each one, in red, is the harmony of a third. 

The actual key, or scale of C major, is on the second string, with the harmony of a third above on the first string. I have grouped together the notes that create the harmony of a third on your guitar by color and have also included the fingering.

Here it is tabbed up for you:

Take some time to familiarize yourself with this pattern that creates the harmony of a third on your guitar. Notice that there are only really two shapes that your fingers are forming here. 

Harmonizing Melody On Your Acoustic Guitar

Again, all the information above is good, but useless to us if we don’t actually use it in a musical way.

So, lets take part of the melody to Amazing Grace and harmonize it with thirds using the top two strings.

It’s important to note here that it’s possible to have the melody as either the top or the bottom note in your harmony. On top is more common, so that’s what I will do by playing the melody to Amazing Grace on the top string of the guitar. This way I can harmonize it with notes on the second string.

Here it is on the top string:

Now all I need to do to harmonize this is find the corresponding harmony note on the second string of my guitar for each note of the melody.

Using the fretboard diagram of thirds presented earlier in this lesson will make this nice and easy to do. 

In the diagram below I have taken the first 3 notes of Amazing Grace and then added the harmony of a third below each one:

Got the idea?

Pretty easy, just keep referencing the fretboard diagram of thirds as you go to make sure you are playing the correct note on the second string to harmonize with your melody on the first string.

Here is the complete excerpt from Amazing Grace harmonized in thirds on the top two strings of your guitar:

The key to really learning and internalizing things on your acoustic guitar is to USE them. If you cannot use something, then you don’t know it. To really know something you must be able to use it.

That said, learn some existing melodies on the top string of your guitar and then harmonize these in thirds as we have done with Amazing Grace. You will internalize and be able to use this idea so much better if you do this, compared to just playing up and down the pattern of thirds via the fretboard diagram.

Playing harmony on your guitar not only sounds great, it is the foundation of music and will open up the fretboard to you in ways not possible by only playing single notes.

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