I’m a pretty good guitar player. I know my major and minor scales for all keys, major/minor/seventh chords, and a few jazz things here and there. I can do the bends and the trills and the hammer on and pull offs, even finger pick some now and again. Been playing a long time, my fingers are fairly fluid, but they’re starting to get bored of going to the same notes.
So I want to take the next step, start learning my modes and chromatics and diminished’s and such, get beyond the I IV V style of music. I want to learn some theory to expand my style.
I am much better at learning on my own than I am taking lessons. So my acutal question is, can anyone recommend a book on music theory for me? One aimed at guitar players would be better. Bonus points for accompanying CD or such with examples.
I have that book as wll. It is a good book.
One that delves further into theory is ‘The Complete Guitarist’ by Richard Chapman (DK Publishing), forward by Les Paul.
As a degreed classical guitarist and theory/composition guy, there really is no definative answer. “Everything you wanted to know about guitar chords” and “Everything you wanted to know about guitar scales” both by Wilbur Styles (not sure if that is his name now) are both pretty good and will give you a good basis of chord and scale structure. They are pretty easy to read and fairly encompassing. Those books, however, aren’t really theory intensive in a classical sense.
If you want something that only talks about musical theory from a classical perspective (ie, includes lots and lots of part-writing and aural examples) “Tonal Harmony, With an Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music” by Tonal Harmony, With an Introduction to Twentieth-Century Music is probably still the current difinitive guide still used by many colleges of music today.
The first set of books will give you a basis on playing and give you ideas on how to make chords and scales but not really show you why or how to use them. They also have a lot more jazz scales and chords than the latter. The Tonal Harmony book is significantly more definitive. It will be a much more difficult read though and you will have to be able to read music fairly well to understand what it is talking about whereas the first two sets you will not need to since they are written in modified tabalature.
I haven’t taught guitar or theory/composition in a while but if I were to go back and my students were primarily guitarists I would probably use the first two books simply because they are more accessible to the average non-professional guitarist. I wouldn’t stop there though, since I know and have worked with music for a long time I would give explanations about the chords that aren’t contained within the book itself and some basic ideas how chord and scale structuring work. (In essence I will be teaching the huge gaps that are left out in the previous books.)
Correction: “Everything About Guitar Chords” is by Wilbur M. Savidge.
By the way, The Guitar Handbook and The Complete Guitarist are really hackwork in the field. I found them to be less complete than the Wilbur Savidge books and much harder to digest from an untrained musician’s standpoint. My students hated those.
Shouldn’t that have read, “IMHO”, somewhere in there?
The OP suggested he was not untrained. Given his stated knowledge, I feel, IMHO he/she should have no trouble with these books and could learn quite a lot from them.
Well, now! I have no doubt that the Guitar Handbook and the Complete Guitarist don’t stand up to the standards of a “degreed classical guitarist and theory/composition guy” such as yourself. For the record, I have a PhD in musicology, and if the OP had been “I’m looking for a profound understanding of music theory, where do I turn?” I wouldn’t have suggested the Guitar Handbook, either.
But I do think for someone getting their toes wet, general overviews such as these aren’t bad a bad place to start. YMMV.
Yeah, maybe IMHO, but I think I’ll give this thread a whirl in Cafe Society. Maybe class the joint up a little bit between all those “Which Simpsons character would you boink” threads.
I put it in General Questions since I was looking for specific factual answers. No problems with moving it though.
Thanks for the help, all. I do have the Ralph Denyers book. I have found it to be excellent, but a bit thin in some places. I feel it gives examples of things, and covers a lot of good ground but isn’t as quite in depth as I would like.