Product Description

Navigate the guitar neck better than ever before with this easy-to-use book! Designed from Musicians Institute core curriculum programs, it covers essential concepts for players of every level, acoustic or electric. A hands-on guide to theory, it will help you learn to build any scale or chord on your own and unleash creativity. No music reading is required.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1942 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 80 pages

Review
A progressive teaching method that offers a clear roadmap through the tangles of the fretboard maze. —Gary Joyner, Acoustic Guitar -- Acoustic Guitar Magazine, July 2004

From the Author
This book clearly relates the fretboard to the same musical principles all professionals on any instrument use, teaching the practical hands-on basics without glossing over the theory every guitarist should know. It does not invent its own terminology or pattern numbering system, a problem that has lessened the value of many books like this in the past. The CAGED-based fretboard system used has world-wide recognition and a long historic basis, refined and tweaked in Musicians Institute curricula since 1977 by hundreds of instructors after its introduction by Howard Roberts in the early 1970s.

You'll cover everything you need for a rock-solid foundation, including modes and slash chords. You'll understand and play (anywhere on the neck!) any scale or chord you encounter or imagine. Besides offering you a chance to completely grasp the guitar, this method assures you will be able to communicate with other trained musicians no matter what their instrument.

The book was designed for use in three arenas: private lessons, classroom instruction, and personal study by the motivated individual. There are 22 short chapters of very gradually increasing difficulty, suitable for teaching in 20-30 minute time frames. Each chapter has modest written and playing assignments, with all the answers in the back of the book. The text was written specifically to be concise, informative, and fun, yet easily understood by non-native English speakers.

After over a year of intense work, I'm happy to present this book. Please use and enjoy it.

About the Author
Barrett Tagliarino has been an MI instructor since 1987 and was Rock Department Head at Hohner MusikSchule in Vienna, Austria in 1994. He’s toured on boats, trains, and buses, by plane, van, and auto, performing countless gigs and sessions, and teaching seminars, clinics, and private lessons.

He has recorded for CD sessions, TV shows, radio commercials, and Karaoke soundtracks. His teaching skills are featured on the Starlicks instructional video, Classic Rock Guitar Soloing. Barrett has also been published in magazines such as Guitar Player and Guitar One.

You can grab free tunes from his first CD, Moe’s Art, along with over 50 full-length guitar-oriented recordings by Barrett and other artists at his web site, monsterguitars.com.

Customer Reviews

Excellent systematic method for learning the fretboard
I have been fascinated by the guitar for over 20 years. As such, I have built up a large library of lessons in various forms. This workbook has pulled many concepts that I have found in disparate sources and coalesced them into one place. My only slight criticism is that the basic music theory involved with learning the fretboard is not in as much depth as I would like. Consequently, I understand some of the confusion noted in other reviews. I encourage beginners to stick with it because being able to break free of the tyranny of the first position will inspire you to further heights no matter what musical style you play. My recommendation for more in-depth music theory for guitar would be the Guitar Grimoire series by Adam Kadmon. Example: The Guitar Grimoire- A Notated Intervallic Study Of Scales

The fretboard is your friend
I have an entire bookcase full of music theory books and how to play the guitar. Not one of them has approached the topic like this book does. I would not recommend this book for beginners who don't have a teacher or mentor. Sort of like trying to visualize driving a car by looking at the mechanical pieces. You need a foundation for it to really start turning the gears (IMHO). But for people like me who have played for 25 years but are tired of memorizing the different scales and chords and feeling "boxed in", now I can 'go anywhere I want', this book was absolutely FREEING for me.

I now can choose any note, make it my root (regardless of the key), know where all the other roots are and create a scale (Major, Minor, Pent etc) on the fly and even alter or bounce between them! I no longer care (or even know) what key I am in, everything is a half or whole step or several combined for interval playing, but everything sounds good and related and I can change direction on any note. This has been the 'lightbulb' for me.

The Fretboard IS laid out with a logic and a purpose that I never fully understood until reading this book. Like the author pointed out, each string is like a keyboard with all the notes laid out. We need to understand how one string relates to the next. I look at the neck very differently and can now see the notes that are related to the one I am playing and make a choice depending on feel and emotion I want to impart, I am not 'limited' to the scale, and everything makes sense! Highly recommended.

Guitar Fretboard Workbook Works
This is an excellent overview of the guitar fretboard. Very helpful and easy to follow. I learned a lot in a short amount of time.