Fretboard Theory – Learn Guitar Theory, Scales, Chords, Progressions, Modes, Song Details and More. Music Theory Lessons For Acoustic and Electric Guitar.
- Map out key notes and navigate around the fretboard
- Play riffs, solos and bass lines with essential scales plus clear up the misunderstanding about modes
- Discover the secret to building chords, chart progressions, play by numbers and recognize keys
- Harmonize with intervals and add extensions to chords like sus4, maj7 and add9
- Enhance your ability to transcribe recorded music, compose, improvise and create your own style
Fretboard Theory by Desi Serna teaches music theory for guitar including scales, chords, progressions, modes and more. Hands-on approach to theory gives you total command of the fretboard and music’s most critical elements by visualizing shapes, patterns and how they connect. ?Content includes: How to learn and practice Pentatonic and Major scale patterns. Guitar CAGED system including chord inversions and arpeggio patterns. Guitar chord progressions and playing by numbers (Nashville Number System). – Roots, keys and applying scales – Understanding music modes and modal scales such as Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian – Playing and using intervals including thirds, fifths and sixths. Adding extensions such as “add 9,” “suspended 4,” and “major 7.” Not only does Fretboard Theory teach music theory in a refreshing new manner, but it takes things a step farther by associating everything to your favorite songs. This is the ONLY GUITAR THEORY RESOURCE that includes important details to hundreds of popular songs. Pop, rock, acoustic, blues, metal and more! ??This new generation of guitar instruction is perfect whether you want to jam, compose or just understand the music you play better. For acoustic and electric guitar players. At 9×12 and 150 pages, Fretboard Theory includes twice the content of ordinary books. Four chapters are also available on DVD (see Getting Started with the Pentatonic Scale, CAGED Template Chord System, Guitar Chord Progressions and Playing By Numbers, Guitar Modes – The Modal Scales of Popular Music).
List Price: $ 29.95
Price: $ 29.95
Gibson’s Learn & Master Guitar
With Gibson s Learn & Master Guitar you get 10 instructional DVDs, 5 Jam-along CDs, 100+ page lesson book and online support.
Designed for those wanting to learn acoustic and electric guitar from the ground up, you ll start with fundamentals (how to strum, use a pick, notes on the strings) and progress to advanced skills (soloing, playing up and down the neck) all while learning musical styles (rock, blues, jazz, fingerstyle and country).
List Price: $ 149.00
Price: $ 84.25
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you will need this + hard work,
The dvd’s and cd’s are great. The book is my favorite part of the package. For learning I really needed a printed book with a well planned songlist.
Don’t buy this if your not willing to work hard. If you’re not sure about learning, try other things.
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|Gibson DVD & CD GuitarCourse,
Recently, I completed the 5th lesson of the Gibson DVC and CD guitar course. Overall, it is a great course. The instructor, Steve, is very talented and easy to understand. The guitar tips he provides are great. Thus far, I have learned a lot, and for the first time in my life, can read music.
At times, I do feel that too much material is covered in a single lesson and feel slightly overwhelmed. When this happens, I listen and follow the instruction in smaller chunks and practice until I master them. Other than that, the instruction is well packaged and presented.
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|If You’re Willing to Work, It’s Gold,
I’ve been playing guitar for nearly 20 years but have always been frustrated by my limitations. My only formal training was an intro guitar class in college and a few months worth of private lessons some time later. I taught myself to finger pick to an intermediate level but have never been very accomplished on lead playing and am not versatile at all. I recently stumbled across some info on the Learn & Master Guitar series on a couple of guitar websites and thought it sounded interesting. As I researched the course, I found it nearly unanimously praised and I eventually decided to bite the bullet and spend the $150 (it seems that the course is nearly always “on sale” on their website). I am so glad I did, just wish I’d had this course 20 years ago!
My problem has always been simple ignorance – I had no idea where to begin. This course does a great job of guiding the player from the most basic principals through to more advanced studies. The instructor on the videos is very warm and is a good teacher – he takes things slowly and methodically and explains everything clearly (and he is also a great guitarist). The course does a good job of keeping things dynamic, mixing theory with hands on learning and offering a number of different resources to help the learning process – the DVD sessions, lessons from the workbook, and CDs with accompaniment tracks to jam along with. The content is also quite diverse – you’ll work on strumming, finger picking, soloing, chords, scales, rock, blues, and jazz styles, and on and on. The videos are well produced and have a really pleasant vibe. Each session has a suggested time period for mastering that session’s material based upon an assumed practice schedule of 15-30 minutes per day. Some sessions may take a week, others a couple of weeks, etc. I think the time estimates are fair for beginners, though some more accomplished players and/or those with prior music theory knowledge may move more quickly through the course. One other very helpful part of the course is the online experience. There is an active community of online users and forums at [...] and the instructor interacts there from time to time in addition to the help & encouragement found from other students.
There are two real sticking points for this course in my opinion. First, your practice time will be self-directed, so lazy folks may not be motivated to follow through. I think this type of course is best suited to self-starter types who are disciplined enough to practice without someone else making them. A flip-side benefit is that you can learn at your own pace based upon your existing skill level and your time availability. Second, this course is pretty heavy on the music theory. For people who just want to learn some cool-sounding riffs and rock out, this course may not be your thing. This series really is about learning and mastering the guitar, and that cannot happen without learning some good solid music theory. This is a strength in my opinion but I know it will turn some others off (heck, I was a 10 year old kid taking piano many moons ago, and I remember how little interest I had in learning to read music!). Highly recommended if you’ve got the time and inclination to work hard – if that’s you then this is money very well spent! This course was initially sold independently but later branded under the Gibson name. It’s no wonder Gibson picked it up, it’s really good.
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|Overlaps with Fretboard Logic, but has some useful info on modes,
This book overlaps a great deal with Fretboard Logic vols 1&2 which I purchased at the same time. It shows you the CAGED chords, scales from the chords, etc. I got about halfway thru the book when I started to see some things I didn’t know already. I consider myself an intermediate player.
The way he explains modes is unique, to my knowledge, and very helpful. The mode is in context of what root it’s played over. You can’t hear the mode of a scale without hearing the root underneath. This alone made the book worth the price of admission for me, and I’m still working through the rest of it.
Some silly things: (1) Auhor lists examples of songs that contain what he is teaching. A list of songs with the E chord in them, oh yeah! Later this is somewhat more useful, for example a list of songs with chromatic scales, or mostly seventh chords. Many of author’s teachings cite the same songs as example without specifying what part of the song is relevant to what’s being taught. I know there’s copyright issues but without this the examples are next to useless.
(2) Author shows the treble staff, the guitar tab, the bass staff, and the bass tab for each example. But never does the bass tab differ from the guitar tab! This is just a waste of space. Honestly, if I wanted to learn bass I’d buy a bass book.
Neither this book nor Fretboard Logic place much emphasis on learning where the root of a scale pattern resides. I know the value of this so I’m going to pencil this in myself.
I guess it’s of value to me if I learned something from it. I have yet to discover the perfect guitar book and I don’t think it exists. I give it three stars.
Friends of the author marking my review as unhelpful: you may fire when ready.
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|Good grasp on solid information,
This is my first guitar learning book besides a Mel Bay book that one of my friends gave me a while ago. I am pleased with this book and I do find it helpful. I certainly have no regrets from buying it. I also like how the author gives a personal touch by sending and replying to e-mails. He also sends links to some extra materials that compliment the material in the book.
I just want to add that I do know music theory from my years playing sax, if that weighs on my review at all.
I’m sure that anyone who wants to get a solid hold on the basics of playing guitar without learning music theory will benefit greatly from this book. It covers the pentatonic patterns, CAGED chord patterns, arpeggio patterns, interval patterns, major scale patterns, and a few other things, and relates them to each other very well. The visuals are used very effectively to teach the relations. You don’t need to sight read to learn from this book and you will not learn how to sight read from it. The emphasis is on patterns and shapes and relating them to songs as well as to each other. This is a very effective and simple way to learn the fretboard and it is done very well in this book. The author is very descriptive of how to apply what he is teaching to playing songs, and the song references are great if you are able to play by ear (because the music is not written in the book, and it would cost a fortune to buy all of the sheet music). The author also encourages the reader to contact him at the end of each chapter so I don’t think you will have any problem getting answers to any questions you have.
The book sits very easily on my music stand thanks to the spiral binding, and the material is presented extremely well. I get the impression that the author put a lot of love into this creation.
This book is marketed very well here on Amazon because, as you can see, no reviewer has anything bad to say about it. However, I was a little mislead by the statement in the description “The ONLY BOOK IN THE WORLD that includes important details to hundreds of popular songs.” The author does explain how to relate the material from the book to the songs listed (by title and artist) in the book, but I think the description goes a little overboard.
Overall – This is a keeper and a great resource for learning to use the fretboard in an effective and simple way. I wouldn’t say it’s going to make you a great player because only practice and constant learning can do that, but it’s a good starting place and a good guide to the basics of the fretboard. I was looking for a guide to learning my way around the fretboard and this book put it together in a way I could see it, know it and use it.
For more in depth study I plan on getting a different book (maybe the Berklee Method) to learn the more complete and technical theory and practice of the guitar, but I also enjoy learning that type of stuff.
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|Clear, Easy to understand, Practical applications,
I have been playing on and off for about 10 years. I have read fretboard theory books before, the CAGED system included, jazz comping, and numnerous books on Modes. I can honestly say not one of them explain the application as well as this book (and videos).
Most of what Serna teaches you probably have seen before; but what is unique about this material is the application. I dont know how many times before in other material the CAGED system, pentatonic scale, and modes have beenn disussed but never applied with actual examples. This course ties it all togther. At least it did for me. For the first time ever, I understand how modes are actually used and which are common and which are rare. Try finding that info in any other course – never happen.
Throughout the course Serna provides examples from the book and videos of how to apply what you have learned from actual songs you have heard on the radio etc.. Although he makes no attempt to teach the entire song, he gives you the understanding to figure it out yourself; so if you want to be told where to put your fingers to play a particular song this is not your book/course. If you want to learn and be able to figure things out, this course should be very helpful. It has been for me at least. Also, I think he does not reproduce entire songs ver batem because the music industry is closing down sites that directly reproduce artist intellectual property. That is why all the courses are now teaching methods “in the style of… Jimi Hendrix etc”.
I play electric blues. I make no attempt to play top 40 cover tunes so my goal is to learn my own style for myself so I need to understand what I am doing and how to figure things out. Without a doubt this book (and videos) has accomplished more in the last month than almost all the other material combined because for the first time ever it “connected the numerous dots” that other courses have failed to do. For example I never fully understood how the pentatonic patterns, both major and minor, tie in to the CAGED system as well as the arpeggio form of the chord.
I do not recommend the course for beginners that do not know too many chords or progressions yet. Also I do not recommend it for those who simply want to “play” without understanding the underlying theory.
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