Customer Reviews

All About Chords

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An excellent book that helps the improvising instrumentalist or any other musicians understand chord structures, how they're formed, and how chord progressions work. If you're looking to create new 'sounds' on your instrument, this is definitely the book for you. Note: this book is not recommended for beginners, if you're a beginner, you might want to check out 'Music Fundamentals' also by Elvo S. D'Amante to get your basics down.

'All About Chords' by Elvo D'Amante is a welcome text for musicians that in a progression, how they can be altered and substituted, and more. As a guitar player, I grew up thinking of chords only as diagrams on a fretboard. 'All About Chords' delves deep into the theories of music to showed me the symmetry of the system and how chords relate to scales, keys, and to one another. This book gave me a far greater understanding of the in and outs of chord and music theory and I highly recommend it. Dix Bruce, musician and author of over 30 instructional books, CDs, and videos for Mel Bay Publication

I read this book cover to cover and liked it so much I even bought a second copy to give to my singing teacher. However I must say in hindsight that despite the fun I had reading it, I have never yet been able to actually apply anything I read in the book to my piano playing. It's a very cerebral book and is great mental excercise to follow his logic. It provides a good background to music harmony, but I think it's imperative to realize that there are a lot of books available on music voicings and harmony that are much, much more applicable to real, actual playing of a musical instrument. By the way, one of the user reviews recommends reading "PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST". I am deeply suspicious of that recomendation because I have read this person's reviews of other music books, and he always throws in that recomendation out of context, yet he has never bothered to write a user review for the actual book itself.

A good primer on the chord notation one is apt to encounter in fake books and jazz charts, but it falls far short when it comes to common-practice harmonic theory. Covers all manner of esoterica like added 9ths and 13ths and diminished and augmented variations, but the material on how chords function in relation to one another is sketchy and unconvincing to this university music department graduate. Better to stick with Piston.

this book was good, but often confusing. it is definatly not for someone who doesn't already know music.

The begining of the book is slow with respect to liking it(for example inversions are presented and then competely forgotten throughout,wondering why they were presented to begin with), but the value of the book begins to appear as one continues, with effort I must addmit,to the following chapters. It is a superb book and I feel obligated to congratulate the author.Missing from the book is the subject of chord connections in conjunction with inversions and the presentation of some examples so we don't forget that we are dealing on matters of music!

This is a helpful, fairly thorough look at certain aspects of harmony. Some of the nomenclature is non-standard, and certain of its suppositions are questionable, but it is always interesting, and to a significant extent it is useful.

Also recommended: PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.

This book is hard core music theroy. From chord basics to harmony. It is presented as a series of lessons and studies in a work book format. OOOO Kayyy... I don't want to bust on this book because it is a very good and worth while educational tool. But it really should be gone over with a music teacher. As a source book and educational referance for guitarest it lacks. In fact if you are not a keyboardest this book is a bit difficult digest. I did get some useful information on harmony and was able to make the information bend to my will, but the extraction process was long and painful. Overall, yes it's a good book and will enrich you as a musician. I doubt if any one in the mosh pit will notice.

this book teaches the secondary dominant (very rare) and how it applies to tradional blues. A true milestone in music theory composition. I particularly liked the bues topics. Excellent! My professor at cal poly treats this book as the music bible. Totally CONTEMPORARY!!!!