Guitar Hacks: The Memory-Friendly Chord Book
About this ebook
For most guitarists there is nothing more tedious than sitting down to learn a bunch of chords from a dry chord book, only to find that after hours of going through them, very few of them actually stick.
A good knowledge of chords will make you a far more rounded player, and allow you to be much more versatile in many playing situations. In truth, you’re more likely to be asked to come up with a rhythm part than a scorching lead break, and if you are you’ll need to know what chords you’re attempting to wail over anyway.
I won’t go into chord theory here, there are plenty of other books that do that very well. What I’ll deal with here is how to memorize chords so that you can start, or expand, your chord vocabulary; what’s more you’ll develop a way to access chords quickly as if you need to hunt and peck for them, they’re pretty much useless.
The idea of this method is to build up a vocabulary of chords by organizing them in a memorable way. New chords are more likely to stick in your brain if they’re connected or related to chords you already know. We'll combine this idea with another simple yet powerful memory technique to make those chords really stick in your head, and be available on demand.
The book takes on the form of a private lesson, or conversation with the author where he seamlessly weaves together chord shapes and helps you actually remember them. There’s no heavy theory work here, just a simply method to learn and remember chords on guitar quickly and easily.
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About the author
Graham Tippett (1977-) studied literature, music and languages in the UK before making a permanent move to Mexico in 2005. It was there he began to explore and research methods of improvisation on the guitar and published the '2 Position Scale System' series of instruction books in 2014, which are the fruit of that research. He is also well-known for his love of languages and music, drawing parallels between the two art forms as he continues to write and research on the subjects of language learning and improvisation. His relentless research into guitar improvisation has recently lead to the creation of the Hacking the CAGED System series of books, and Soloing Without Scales - an alternative look at how to improvise on guitar. Graham is also a graduate of the ACM (Academy of Contemporary Music) in Guildford, where he was taught by the likes of Guthrie Govan, Dave Kilminster, Eric Roche and many others.
