- Book author
- Desi Serna
DESCRIPTION
Make your guitar sing with insight on music theory brings your instrument to lifeThere’s a universe of incredible music living in your guitar. You just need to discover how to let it out. In Guitar Theory For Dummies, expert guitarist and instructor Desi Serna walks you through the music theory concepts you need to understand to expand your musical horizons. From deciphering the mysteries of the fretboard to adapting chord progressions to a song’s key, you’ll master techniques that will help you move past simple, three-chord songs to more complex and creative pieces.
Build on your existing knowledge of open and barre chords and simple progressions with practical instruction that demystifies scales and chord voicings and shows you how to bring them together to create impressive music. You can also jump over to dummies.com to hear audio samples of the examples featured in the book.
You’ll also learn:
- How chords, keys, and scales are built and how they interact with one another
- Powerful concepts, like intervals, chord extensions, modes and modal scales, that grant access to a world of musical possibilities
- How popular songs apply elements of guitar theory and how you can apply the same techniques
Introduction
Music theory is the study of how music works. Guitar theory focuses on understanding music from a guitar player’s perspective. Makes sense, right? With a good working knowledge of guitar theory, including the use of scales, chords, progressions, modes, and more, you can figure out why a song is put together the way it is and how you can improvise your own music.
Guitar Theory For Dummies, 2nd Edition with Online Practice focuses on understanding music from a guitar player’s perspective. The book helps you develop a working knowledge of guitar theory, including the use of scales, chords, progressions, modes, and more. With this knowledge, you can figure out why a song is put together the way it is, and how you can improvise and compose your own music.
This book also covers how to play popular music on the guitar fretboard, as well as why certain elements of music go together the way they do. By popular music, I mean the types of songs you regularly hear on Top 40 and classic rock radio stations, including music by Chuck Berry, The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, the Eagles, Guns N’ Roses, Dave Matthews Band, and U2, just to name a few. Throughout this book, you discover important details of songs like “Johnny B. Goode,” “Purple Haze,” “Tears in Heaven,” “Stairway to Heaven,” and many more.
Instead of taking a traditional approach to music theory, which usually emphasizes reading and writing standard musical notation, this book takes a hands-on approach that emphasizes playing on the guitar fretboard and using guitar tablature and neck diagrams. For example, it shows you how to play scale patterns used for riffing and jamming guitar music, as well as how to build the same chord shapes on the fretboard that famous guitarists use. It also shows you how to play through common chord progressions that you hear in the most popular radio hits. Perhaps most importantly, though, it explains how all these components work together.
