Ennio Morricone wrote The Ecstasy of Gold for a full orchestra, a wordless soprano wailing into the desert wind, and Clint Eastwood sprinting through a graveyard. I have six strings and a living room. One of us clearly overreached, and it wasn't Ennio.
This is a fingerstyle MelodyChords take on the piece — that soaring melody and its sweeping harmony crammed into a single guitar part. It's also, fittingly, the exact tune Metallica marches out to at every concert, so if it doesn't make you want to walk somewhere in slow motion, check that you still have a pulse.
How this MelodyChords arrangement actually works
The whole trick of a MelodyChords arrangement is that the melody always sits on top and stays the loudest voice, while the harmony hums quietly underneath. In Morricone's original the soprano soars over a rocking arpeggio figure; on guitar your fingers carry that top-line melody with a bit more attack, and your thumb keeps the harmony rolling gently below it. It lives mostly in a minor key, which is why it sounds noble and slightly doomed at the same time — very spaghetti western, very Morricone.
The concrete takeaway: practise the melody notes alone first, exaggerate how much louder they are than everything else, and only then add the harmony back in. If a listener can hum the tune afterwards, your voicing worked. If they just heard a pretty blur, your thumb is winning a fight it was never supposed to enter. Balance beats speed here every single time — same lesson you learn the minute you take any minor key seriously.
Yes, I know the studio version has a 60-piece orchestra and I have a thumb. But my thumb never asks for a per-diem, so financially I'm ahead. Grab the tab and my Guitar Pro files over on Patreon.