# Can someone recommend a good music theory book?



## noobfret (Nov 25, 2007)

I've been playing the acoustic guitar for a few months and know a few chord progressions and simple tunes. I also have the following books:

The Guitar Handbook
Hal Leonard Guitar Method 1,2,3

However, I still don't understand when someone says the A, E, G or whatever letter string. I know what those letter chords look like but never quite understood how someone can assign a letter to some fretted string. Any books or other resources will help. I never took any music theory courses in school.


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## devnulljp (Mar 18, 2008)

Just a quickie to clear that up.
In standard tuning, your guitar is tuned (low to high) EADGBE.
One fret is a semitone (a half step), so for example the first fret/fifth string your A note goes up a halfstep to A# (or Bb, it's the same thing). Up another fret and you get B. Up another fret and you get C (there is no B# or Cb)...and so on up the neck. It repeats at the twelfth fret...

When you tune your guitar, do you fret at the fifth fret to get the note for the next highest string (except from the third to send where you use the fourth fret)? 

Sounds like a quick refresher in the notes on the fretboard, and you'll be good to go.

Here's a good primer: http://guitarsecrets.com/all_notes.htm

And here's all the notes: 









You'll start to see patterns, so don't let it overwhelm you...

When you play a chord, you're playing a specific set of notes related to the main root note. Good news is that the guitar you can play shapes that move around the neck, and as long as you know where the root is, you can play the chord.

That's the 'CAGED' thing you might have heard of: http://www.free-guitar-chords.com/basic-beginner-caged-guitar-chords.htm

A major chord is a triad - just three notes from the major scale - the root and the major third and perfect fifth above the root
Sounds worse than it is: the major third is just four semitones (or four frets) up, the perfect 5th is just a jump of 7 semitones/frets.
So the basic A major chord is A (fifth string open) + major 3rd (four frets up = C#, but we jump an octave and play it on the second string) + perfect 5th (7 frets up = E, which is the same as the 4th string 2nd fret).
Minor is the same thing but using the minor third, which is just one semitone/fret less than the major third (for A, it's C).

There seem to be quite a lot of teachers on here, so you'll no doubt get better info from them, but that's the basics. Isn't that covered in the Hal Leonard book? They usually start off with charts and chord pictures and things like that.


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## wnpgguy (Dec 21, 2007)

Thats a sweet diagram.. I was am always on the hunt for that style of diagram to show me different scale patterns for lead. Kind of like this.

Figure 3 - Major 7 Arpeggio








Figure 4 - Minor 7 Arpeggio








Figure 5 - Dominant 7 Arpeggio









But all of them in an easy to find book form so when I find the key signature of a song I can just follow along in the book.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

The Guitar Cookbook by Jesse Gress (Backbeat Books) ~ This one is my current favourite.

Music Theory by Tom Kolb (Hal Leonard Guitar Method) ~ Will go well with your method books.

There are many other related books, but a general music theory book like the ones I mentioned which relate it all to guitar will be most practical. 

Get a dictionary of music like the Oxford, too. 

Peace, Mooh.


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## Alex (Feb 11, 2006)

The book "Chords and progressions" by Arnie Berle is a great study...it turned on a few lightbulbs for me...well explained and well laid out..

Other interesting stuff...

The blues from jazz to rock by Don Mock (DVD)
Modes:by Frank Gambale (DVD)
Accelerating your playing by Tomo Fujita (DVD)


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## Starbuck (Jun 15, 2007)

Whatever you do, do NOT get the guitar grimoir books right now! They give me brain cramps..... Not to say they're not extremely useful, just very confusing in the beginning.


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