Ghosting

Summary: For polyphonic music or fingerstyle, play the melody with proper fingering and full expression, and only pretend to play any other voices.  

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If you’re playing a multi-voice piece, such as a fingerstyle arrangement, it’s easy for the melody slip slightly out of control, or to lose the overall balance of the voices. After a solid rhythm, a singing melody is the most important thing for your listeners.

Ghosting lets you focus on the melody, without forgetting about the rest of the hands and fingers. For this technique, you only play the melody, but continue to finger and pretend-play the accompaniment.

For example, here’s a simple arrangement of the first few bars of the tune “Freight Train”:

options scale=0.85 font-style=italic tabstave notation=true voice notes :q 3/1 0/1 3/2 0/2 | :q 4/3 :8 3/1 6/2 :h T6/2 voice notes :8 3/5 2/4 3/6 2/4 3/5 2/4 3/6 2/4 | 3/6 3/4 5/5 3/4 3/6 3/4 5/5 3/4

Freight train intro

If you aren’t satisfied with how you’re expressing the melody, try playing just that, continuing to position and move all fingers (fretting and plucking hand), including non-melody ones, where they would be if you were playing the full piece:

options tab-stems=true scale=0.85 tabstave voice notes :q 3/1 0/1 3/2 0/2 | :q 4/3 :8 3/1 6/2 :h T6/2 voice notes :8 X/5 X/4 X/6 X/4 X/5 X/4 X/6 X/4 | X/6 X/4 X/5 X/4 X/6 X/4 X/5 X/4

Melody with ghosted bass

The ghosted notes here are marked as “X”: they’re not muted or muffled, simply pretend to play them, or play them as quietly as you can.

Everything should be the same for all other voices. Experiment with fretting or simply placing the other non-melody fingers.

Why this works

For complex pieces, it’s easy to get absorbed in the mechanics of playing, and accidentally lose the melody. By ghosting non-melody voices, you’ll be able to sort out the mechanics of the melody within the proper context of the full piece, so you can focus on bringing it out and expressing it better.