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Chord Chemistry


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Posted

Hey all,

 

I bought the book Chord Chemistry by Ted Greene a while back based on several positive opinions on this site. It looks good and there is a ton in it which leads me to my question. How have you guys used this book? There seems to be more than just a reference manual here yet I havent got into it yet and am not quite sure how he intended it to be used.

 

There are obvious approaches to it, but it came so highly recommended it leads to believe there is more here than I am getting off an admitted short glance.

 

Thanks!

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Posted

There is little "reading" learning in CC compared to how much you'll learn by just playing through the material he presents.

 

With a little chord knowledge and fretboard knowledge, playing through his voicings will make you KNOW the fretboard more than any book I've seen to date (and I've been playing since about 1975).

 

This book was the bible of guitar books for me. I've been through 3 copies of it over the decades.

 

It's overwhelming even today just looking at it, but when you start playing through Ted's examples you'll be "hearing" what he's trying to teach you. Not that the reading material isn't worth anything, BECAUSE IT IS. But, by playing the exercises you'll realize WHY he's telling you what he is.

 

The section where he shows you two pages of the A chords can be VERY overwhelming...but just realize he's taking THE NOTES of an A chord (A C# E) and showing you that any combination of those notes is STILL an A Chord regardless of how ridiculous the fingers are. It's all in the voicing. Also, all those combinations he shows are just the tip of the iceberg when YOU start looking for more combinations yourself. (this is where your fretboard knowledge will soar)

 

His Moving Chords in 4th chapter is invaluable to understanding HOW the guitar words. His substitutions and modulation stuff will last you a lifetime as well as the Diatonic section.

 

In one of my "weekly" lessons coming up at HCLL, I'm going to take his first example (the one about the bad sounding chord when played alone, but sounding gorgeous in the progression) and expand it further into more beautiful chords and voicings continuing the progression a few more times.

 

Good luck with the book. Blow through it one time and then work the chapters randomly in detail. I can't stress enough how much your fretboard knowledge is going to explode after a couple of weeks of messing with that book. And, all for about $10! That books a legend (it's also Steve Vai's #1 book recommendation).

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Posted

check out mick goodricks, mr. goodchord almanacs

i think theyre a lot better than CC if you already have a good amount of theory under your belt but to each his own

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Posted

Hey all,


I bought the book Chord Chemistry by Ted Greene a while back based on several positive opinions on this site. It looks good and there is a ton in it which leads me to my question. How have you guys used this book? There seems to be more than just a reference manual here yet I havent got into it yet and am not quite sure how he intended it to be used.


There are obvious approaches to it, but it came so highly recommended it leads to believe there is more here than I am getting off an admitted short glance.


Thanks!

 

 

Yes, this is a great book. Just take it slow and learn to apply all the knowledge in there to real tunes.

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Posted

Man, I got Ted's book in 1992 and I STILL study it! But my first mistake was probably trying to take it on as a method book and desperately trying to grasp every page the moment I laid eyes on it. I wrote pages of chord progressions trying to understand some of his concepts. I find some of those pages in my music drawer today and I have no idea what I was doing...time wasted.

 

However I learned some great stuff early on, the moving chords in 4ths mentioned earlier and that main page of essential chords put a bunch of great sounds into my fingers. I found that studying other methods along the way (books, lessons, guitar mags, etc.) and coming back to CC made a huge difference. There were chapters that made no sense to me back in 1992, then coming back to the same chapter a few years later the info was crystal clear and obvious to me.

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Posted

I was playing with this book this morning, thanks to your feedback all!

 

The way it seems to me I added one usable chord shape to my playing, thats about it, I'll add another tomorrow hopefully. There is tons in there! Gennation I see how you could go through so many copies of this.

 

I used to pound through stuff but none of it ever seemed to sink in so now I basically get one new piece and then jam on it for a bit to figure out how to utilize it. Then take another and so on.

 

So when I see a page with a hundred chords on it my mind goes a little nuts!

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