The Advanced Guitar: A Guitar Player's Guide to Essential Music Theory in Words, Music, Tablature, and Sound

For most guitarists, studying music theory is about as popular as studying Chinese. Yet for those who wish to go beyond the common rock scales and chords, it's a necessity. Theory provides the insights into the workings of music: understand the theory and you have the power and freedom to experiment, tinker and alter. Theory provides the curious with explanations. My theory studies had the effect of opening up the fingerboard to me. I began to see the possibilities for the first time.

A basic understanding of theory will give you the ability to choose appropriate scales to play over chord progressions, to form your own chords, arpeggios and scales, enhance your reading and allow you to communicate bath verbally and on paper with other musicians. Theory is also helpful for aspiring writers by providing options for chord progressions. And most importantly, theory will open up your ear; giving you the ability to attach meaning to sound.

This one will illustrate all of the concepts on the fingerboard. lt is meant to be a practical book, one you can learn from easily. To this end, many musical
examples are included. These examples will demonstrate all of the important concepts, attaching a sound
to an idea.

Many guitarists rely on shapes when learning new chords, scales and arpeggios and there is nothing wrong with this approach. The guitar lends itself to this way of learning. Whenever possible, this book will use a picture in place of, or along with words. Music is not words, nor is it pictures, but the combination of words, pictures and sounds will make learning as easy as possible.