Desi Serna - Guitar Theory For Dummies: With Online Practice

Guitar Theory For Dummies, 2nd Edition with Online Practice

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Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021947193

ISBN 978-1-119-84297-2 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-84334-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-84317-7 (ebk)

1. Chapter 6
2. Chapter 7
3. Chapter 8
4. Appendix A

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16

Music theory is the study of how music works. Guitar theory focuses on understanding music from a guitar players 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 players 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.

Heres what sets this book apart from other guitar resource materials:

• The practicality and efficiency of the content: If you dont need to know a certain topic or technique to play guitar and understand popular music, I dont present it here. On the flip side, I cover many concepts that dont typically show up in traditional music theory courses but that are important for guitar players to learn.
• The number of familiar song references: Say goodbye to learning abstract ideas without knowing how they apply to the music you know and love! I refer to some of the most popular songs and famous guitarists of all time in the pages that follow.

To make the content more accessible, I divided it into five parts:

• , Getting Started with Guitar Theory, explains guitar theory in a nutshell and covers a few things you'll need to know in order to navigate the fretboard throughout the rest of this book.
• , Working with Chords from the Ground Up, describes how chords are formed using triads from the major scale, how to go beyond basic open position chord shapes to play various chord forms based on the CAGED system, and how to create chords with more depth and color using added chord tones and extensions.