Customer Reviews

Understanding Chord Progressions for Guitar: Compact Music Guides Series

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

 

 

This is a great little book to start jazzing. Very helpful for me. Due to the small size, the information is very straightforward and clear (notes, tabs, roman numerals and chord diagrams are all used!). It is understandable, however, that one reviewer below gave this book one star and another gave it five stars. This is because the book is ONLY an outline of jazz guitar that just begins to scratch the surface. It gives basic tools (chord extensions, substitutions, various progressions etc.) and a quick example by which to learn each concept. No musical guidance or application is given. If this is what you want, this is the book for you. Overall, it's great for learning what can be done but gives no advancing information beyond that. This book is a staring point for jazz guitar that is best if supplemented by an instruction book that explains and tells how to use the tools from this book.

If this is your first jazz book, it is a seven bucks very well spent.

This booklet has some inadvertant gems of contextual theory. I bought it as a rank beginner and couldnt make heads or tails of it because it assumes a certain level of knowledge. If you're like me, you've eased into a core staple of patterns and progressions - this booklet helps me break out of that limited universe and expand.

There are some pure errors that are a big problem for an instructional book. They can be found very early in the book and diminish it's value, since when I play a progression in the book that doesn't sound right I wonder if it's me or the book that's doing something wrong. Example, the chord chart on the top of page 8 labels an F7 chord as F major.

For the $5.95 price however it's a good deal. It'd be a great deal at $9.95 if the extra $4 were invested in an editor.

I was looking for a concise guide on altering jazz chords. Arnie Berle's guide is a hands-on reference if you're looking to embellish chords progressions, AND if you're intermediate to advanced in jazz harmony and guitar playing (this reference will hardly be helpful to beginners, imho). This is no sheet music, but as a narrowly focused guide this is the most helpful reference. In this book I found everything I've been scrapping up bit by bit in other chords&progressions books. This one is an ultimate source, highly recommended.

I bought this book a few years ago and kept giving up on it, so I recently tried to sit down and practice it step by step.
It starts with major chords, which is a pretty universal starting point. From there he gives you a couple chord positions (from the middle of the fretboard) and tells you to memorize what each one would be in every position. After that, it jumps into dominant 7th, with little-to-no explanation about chord construction. Technically, this isn't a chord construction book, or a music theory book, but obviously a little background between "lessons" would be helpful.

So after learning a basic few chord progressions (I-IV-V, II,V, I)which incorporate arbitrary chord forms, it skips into very awkwardly shaped chords, and nonsensical "variations" on the chords within those SAME chord progressions. The "variations" bit is funny, because it's never explained that going from a chords major to minor form changes the key, and doesn't sound natural to listen to. He just suggests experimenting by putting variations on a chord for no real reason.

There aren't any chapters, and the arrangement doesn't make any sense. Basically, it doesn't start easy and build to more advanced principles, it starts easy, then gets hard, then gets harder. It's definitely not a book for somebody new to music theory or guitar playing. Anybody who can understand this book wouldn't need it.

I wouldn't agree with the title "Understanding Chord Progressions" at all, as there's no explanation as to why one chord progresses naturally into other chords within a song. If the book were called "Here Are Some Arbitrary Chord Progressions That Have Been Used Before. Maybe You've Heard One." It would be accurate. As for the claim on the cover that reading this book will be able to help you play any song you hear by applying the principles you learn-- 100% not true. If you're lucky you'll know how to major chords in two voicings.

This books explains, albeit very tersely, the function of various chords. Berle tells you how a particular chord can be used. See, e.g., the explanation of a passing chromatic chord on p.34 and the function of the diminished 7th chord at p. 35). I would recommend this book to someone who already knows about music theory and knows some workable chord forms, but really wants to know how to USE the various KINDS of chords he or she has learned.

You might get frustrated if you don't already know some more playable forms of some of the chords that Mr. Berle uses to illustrate his examples. For example, at page 7 Chords of Movement, Berle uses a version of a dominant 7th chord that I find very difficult to play. It is a first position chord grip that puts the dominant 7th note on the third string where it is likely to be muted because only a contortionist could play this chord grip and make every note be heard. And, check out the C6 chord on page 14. There are much easier ways to play a C6 chord, and they sound a lot better than this one. Fortunately, the majority of the chord forms used in this book can be played with a modicum of effort by people who are not double-jointed.

As I said at the outset, this book provides some insight into how variou kinds of chords can be used. I bought it for precisely this reason, and I have not been disappointed. But, you may need another chord book if your knowledge of chord forms and music theory is limited.

A great little gig book. Simple and to the point, the illustrations show you how to form those awkward chords that you know sound good but are tough to learn.

For a compact book, it contains more useful information than books three times as big. Most helpful in understanding how to alter and embellish basic ii-V-I and I-IV-V progressions and understanding how to analyze chord function within a progession. A must for anyone serious about the guitar.

I've been trying to improve my guitar playing for most of my adult life. Put simply, this book didn't help at all. I didn't understand much of what the author was trying to convey, and I've had some music theory in the past. I hope there's a helpful book out there for those of us who are interested in learning more about the guitar, but for me this wasn't it.