Rod Stewart's Sailing is legally required to be sung by 40,000 football fans, at least three of whom are crying into a scarf. It is a big, wet, glorious wall of sound — so naturally I decided one guitar and zero backing vocals should carry the whole thing.
This little clip is a chord-melody arrangement (I call these MelodyChords): the top notes sing the tune while the chords hold everything up underneath, so a single guitar plays both jobs at once. Tabs are included, no ferry ticket needed.
How the chord melody works
The trick to any chord melody is a simple rule of hierarchy: the melody note is always the highest string you pluck, and the chord tones get stacked politely below it. If a chord voicing wants to poke a note out above your tune, you drop it — the melody is the boss, the chords are the crew. On Sailing that works beautifully because the melody moves slowly, so you get plenty of time to reshape each chord under it as the tune drifts along.
The concrete takeaway: play the melody completely on its own first until you know exactly which string each note lives on. Then add only the chord tones that fit underneath without covering it — often that's just two or three notes, plucked together with your thumb on the bass. That "melody first, chords second" order is the whole secret, and it's the same one that powers gentler starters like Twinkle Twinkle.
Fair warning: once you can play both the tune and the harmony at once, you become insufferable at parties and stop returning bassists' calls. Worth it. Grab the Guitar Pro files and the original videos over on Patreon.