Customer Reviews

Chord Tone Soloing: A Guitarist's Guide to Melodic Improvising in Any Style (Musicians Institute: Private Lessons)

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Barrett Tagliarino books are easy to follow. This one uses a format similar to his Fretboard Workbook. Ideas are introduced with easy to read chord diagrams that revolve around the CAGED system of chord organization. Chord tones are emphasized as one solos. This outlines the chord progression making the soloist sound "melodic," instead of simply playing the right scale over chords.

This book expects the reader to be new to soloing and progresses in baby steps. The other book on the same subject by Berklee Press called "Melodic Improvisation" is much more advanced and focuses on heavy weight jazzers like Pat Martino, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, and monster players of that caliber. This book is accessible to rock, folk, bluegrass, and country guitarists, not just jazz cats. The secret to success, the point of the book, is to target chord tones as one solos, but how does one do that?

To answer that question, Barrett provides in depth guitar theory, a lot of break down and analysis, scalar choices, key center analysis, and a lot of down home humor along the way to keep things from getting overwhelming. All-in-all, Tagliarino has written another instructional book you'll want to keep in the library for continued study.

This book is the advanced user manual for your guitar. If you already know the basics such as chords and scales then this book is EXACTLY what you need.

Basically it covers the how and why of music and how you the guitar player should think about it. Be forwarned this is not a book that will make you better overnight. In fact there is a chance that you will feel as though you have gotten worse at first. My reccommendation for those that can afford the time is to buy this book and use it right along side a good relative pitch ear training program....seriously. If you want to be a good musician then the methods in this book will provide the how and why while your ear will be responsible for the when.

I have A LOT of guitar books...as do most of you reading this. This book teaches you the way to think about the guitar. It will take a lot of serious practice to ingrain the material in these pages, but those that do will transition for ok players to real players.

Plain and simple: Best book I've bought in a long time.

One draw back. The sound tracks are corney sounding...but that's a very minor issue in light of what this book provides.

I've been a guitar player for over 20 years and a guitar teacher for the past 5, and this book is one of the best I've come across. Whenever I show a student scales, they want to know how to turn those scales into music. I can remember having the same frustration when I was starting out. The information in this book answers that question, and clarifies a lot of the confusion about playing a solo. This book is clearly written, absolutely packed with information, and - most importantly - that information is presented in manageable, fun chapters. This book has given me a whole new excitement about playing. A guitar instruction classic.

This lesson book and CD is exceptional. What does the beginner or intermidiate guitar player do between strumming those endless chords to make the music more interesting? How do you fill in those "spaces" in your playing to take things to the next level? What can you do that sounds impressive and professional besides just strumming chords or finger picking them? The answers to ALL of those questions are right here in this book!

The book lays out how that you can add interesting melody lines and great "riffs" or phrases to your chords and does it in an easy to understand way with examples that you can both see and hear. The musical solos are based on the current chords that you are playing, so both hearing them and adding them in becomes easier. In a nutshell these lead pieces make sense, musically and formationally and are easy to transition into with your current chord understanding.

I would rate this book as "excellent" for those who have a basic understanding of chords and chord movement and guitar students who would classify themselves as being on an intermediate level. This course will take you to advanced level if you apply the concepts!

Barrett Tagliarino does an excellent job explaining how to use of chord tones in a guitar solo.

He starts out with a few simple examples, then dives right into all the theory before going back to expanding on the chord tone idea. He gets you to try to play long continuous lines trying to hit chord tones on chord changes. This concept will put guitarists leaps and bounds ahead of the vast majority of guitarists out there today.

Chord tones are extremely important and often neglected with the overemphasis on scales these days. However I find that the best way to develop melodic solos is to learn short melodic phrases while visualizing the underlying chord/arpeggio shapes for the current chord. These melodic phrases can come from transcriptions, etude books, and so on.

Knowing all the scales and where the chord tones are is simply not enough to make a good solo. Practicing long lines while hitting chord tones tends to be incredibly boring and unmelodic even with the use of chord tones. Most students don't have the vocabulary for a particular style so they struggle to come up with melodic lines. I would have liked to see more examples of melodic lines in various styles and how to visualize the underlying shapes that the melodic line weaves around.

This book was EXTREMELY useful to me. I've been struggling with other texts on the CAGED approach and getting not much more than frustrated. The initial exercise on charting the roots up the neck and then interconnecting them with circles turned on my first light. The trick about playing to hit a target note with a lead phrase was also an 'aha' moment. I'm still in the early stages, but I would highly recommend this to anyone who's looking to expand their skills into soloing.

You can't teach creative improvisation, but you can teach the prerequisites, and Tagliarino's books are the best organized, most approachable methods of understanding the guitar and its relationship to music that I've come across. He doesn't just give you the concepts, he quizzes you on them and gives you good practice materials. Used in combination with a live teacher, or alternatively, a lot of self-discipline, they are great stuff.

Chord-Tone Soloing is one of the few books on the market that looks at a very important topic in guitar playing. Athough most amateurs are unaware of it, the majority of great guitar solos, especially those that aren't blues based, are very tied into chord tones, and most great players, whether they are fully conscious of it or not, hit chord tones at just the right moments in their solos. That's why theirs sound so much better than ours do!

In this book Barrett Tagliarino, who is much more concerned with teaching than he is showing off, tells you what notes to target and just as importantly, when to hit them. Indeed, there is a lot in here about timing, which is something those of us who have never practiced with a metronome or had formal training need some help with. I'm not just talking about having a "natural" sense of rhythm; I'm describing the ability to hit certain tones on certain beats so they really stand out. Barrett explains this quite well.

If you are wondering why just wanking around the pentatonic scale doesn't sound right in some songs, or if your soloing is in a major rut, check out this fine book. And give it time--many of these exercises take practice and patience, but in the end, your soloing will be vastly improved.

I have several students in this book right now and they all love it! It is such a methodical, seemingly simple approach - yet it covers so much. I highly recommend this book.

The title of the book is a litle deceptive. I would have guessed that it would be about arpeggios, when in fact it covers scales/modes as well. Of course, as you play the scales, the chord tones are the connecting points. In short, I can see how this book could be useful for a guitarist who wants to move beyond the basic rock stuff and start playing music with a more sophisticated harmonic basis. However, if you're already conversant with using scales and arpeggios over chord changes, you're not going to pick up anything new here.