Seeing Music on the Guitar: A visual approach to playing music - Softcover

Perhaps the first book of its' kind to put you inside the mind of guitar players everywhere. Successful guitar players develop an ability to “see” the music they play on the fretboard of the instrument. They see the music they play as a simple relationship of shapes and relative positions. As easily as you already can distinguish a triangle from a square or circle, stringed instrumentalists see music on the fretboard of their instrument. Further, just as you could draw those basic shapes of triangle square or circle from memory, guitar players can visually "draw" chord shapes on their fingerboards and move those shapes around easily, creating new music.This is an inherently special gift those who play stringed instruments have been given. No other kind of instrument makes it so easy for the musician to have a visual roadmap of the music, making things like improvisation or transposing a song to another key so easy. Your fingers will follow these maps to get to the music. This book will show you how to see music as simple shapes and use these shapes to more quickly and proficiently play and create music.This book is for two kinds of students:1. The absolute beginner. Welcome.2. Those who have learned something about the guitar, maybe some chords, maybe even have a good bit of playing experience, but lack knowledge of the way music is built. They have a grip on how to play some music, but don’t understand why they’re playing these things. Why chords use particular notes. Why some chords in a song are major or minor. Without this knowledge of the “whys”, it’s difficult, if not impossible, for them to develop as a player. For them, the guitar becomes a giant, frustrating exercise in memorization. It shouldn’t be.In this book, you’ll see that there really is very little music theory to be memorized. You did a lot more memorizing in your first year of math class than you will here. There are literally thousands of chord voicings available to a guitarist, yet they can be boiled down to a few simple ideas that anyone can grasp. You’ll see the simple relationship between chords and scales and you’ll learn how to play any chord, even one you’ve never seen before. No knowledge of sheet music is necessary here. While reading music is great and certainly encouraged, this book doesn't use it. The approach here is to understand how music is constructed and ‘looks’ on the neck of the guitar. While we won’t get into any particular musical style or specific techniques, the information here is common to all Western music: Rock, Folk, Country, Pop, Classical, Jazz.