h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Its been a while, but I once took some jazz guitar lessons from an instructor who used Ted Greene's approach. (Going from hazy memory here, the class notes are boxed up) The simplest way I can describe it is "chord melodies", where most "notes" are in fact part of a chord, so the "song" (guitar solo) is a series of jazz style chords with only a few quick single notes in places. The "tablature" is in fact a series of chord diagrams with any following single notes shown as numbers. So the downbeat chord has x's on the diagram, then subsequent notes are 1,2,3 etc., on the same chord diagram. Greene's widely used book "Chord Chemistry" gives an almost endless number of variations for chord fingerings, so you can find one that is practical (and cool ) for a given note in a song. Good stuff.

Yes, chord diagrams are a bit different from tabs, but tabs are a bit more flexible in that they allow more that just chord patterns to be written - like solos, etc.

I agree and have used guitar tab extensively. But just to clarify, the approach I mentioned above does, in fact, include the entire melody of the song with every note located on the fretboard via a chord diagram. Each note is either part of a chord (typically the top note like the soprano voice in a hymn), or as a subsequent note played while the chord is held, using numbers 1,2,3 etc. on the same chord diagram. It works well for some styles, typically mainstream jazz like "They Can't Take That Away From Me" played as a "chord melody". But of course its not so good for Joe Pass style one note soloing, need standard tab there I think ...

Yes, yes...however I'm not too familiar with chord grids; I still can't play rhythm guitar worth crap. I try though.