Complete Book of Harmony, Theory & Voicing for Guitar

A COMPREHENSIVE & EXPANSIVE GUITAR-VOICING BIBLE FROM, AND FOR AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE... and then some. Suggestion: IMMEDIATELY get this book BEFORE IT GOES OUT OF PRINT. An AMAZING (and very advanced book unlike the typical "chord-dictionaries"). My background: Almost 25 years ago I was offered a teaching position at Berklee College of Music after the Harmony Chair heard and analyzed the scores of some of my compositions. When I attended Berklee in the late 70s, I'd studied under Brett's guidance (along with Herb Pomeroy, Ken Pullig, Barry Nettles, Richard Herman, et al. -- well before Brett had developed his systematic and wonderful "enharmonic" harmonic approach. I also studied advanced improvisation with Hal Galper for two years. Some salient factors re. this book:1) PRE-REQUISITES of Brett's book: The book presumes that the reader knows quite a bit about: music theory; tertial, functional, non-functional (textural/impressionistic), modal, VERY chromatic harmonization; fretboard organization, BLUES and JAZZ vocabularies, reading a chord chart for Old Standards, READING NOTES ON THE STAFF; and EAR TRAINING.2) A LIFETIME OF STUDY: Like David Liebman's incredible book on chromaticism, Brett's work contains a lifetime of analysis and wisdom. His explanations are articulate and well thought out. You can work on the presented materials for a lifetime.3) EXPANSIVE/OPEN-ENDED -- conceptually and aurally. One of the wonderful side-benefits of the Brett's articulate explanations is that he not only expands one's THINKING and HEARING -- as in a major paradigm shifts -- he frees one's mind and ears to INFINITE possibilities (like Mick Goodrick's wonderful "Creative Chordal Harmony for the Guitar", or any of Steve Khan's books.4) TRADITIONAL AND CONTEMPORARY ENHARMONIC PERSPECTIVES: Although Brett begins with the standard tertial "Drop-Two" voicings he quickly goes into a multitude of possibilities all eye-, ear-, and mind-opening. For example, just the way we can hear a C note as the root of a C triad, the 3rd of and Ab major7 #5, or the 5th of an F triad, we can hear GROUPS of notes in alternate aural (and unexpected) contexts as well. Take a simple E minor triad and smidgen of his "enharmonic" applications: Emi/C bass = Cmaj 7, Emi/A bass = A9 no 3rd, Emi/Eb bass = Eb7 (no 7th) b9b13, Emi/F bass = F ma7 (no 3 or 5) 9 #11. Emi/Db bass = Dbmi7b5. More advanced: B triad/C = D7 (no root or 7th) b9 13, D triad/Bb = C7 (no root or 3rd) 9 #11 13, G triad/Bb = Bb7 b9 13.5) COMPREHENSIVE: The book is so immense in it's knowledge base that I can pop it open to ANY page and see, conceive of, and hear multiple possibilities I've never thought of or HEARD after a lifetime of fairly serious musical study.6) SOME ADVANCED CHAPTER HEADINGS: Tension Additions on Dim. 7th Chords; Approach Voicings; Symmetrical Dominant Substitutions; Altered Dom.; Quartal Voicings; Chromatic Guidlines; Triads over Bass Voicings; Song Examples, etc.6) SELF-INVESTMENT AND GROWTH. Despite that this book may be at first over your head and beyond your ears -- like when I purchased 7 YEARS prematurely Ludmila Ulehla's incredible "Contemporary Harmony" when I was 26) -- you will grow into Brett's mind and ears little by little until you realize his genius and how the presented materials change forever your ears, mind, and understanding and conceptualization of harmonization, the fretboard -- hence, your musical personality. His harmonic ear training approach will expand your ideas about melody and composition as well. Even if you have the book in your library years before you dive in it will be there when you're ready for it.7) PRICE: Almost any page -- sometimes any sentence -- may be worth the price of the book; It will even have answers for questions you never thought of.Brett, you've done guitarists of the world a gigantic favor.

August 1, 2019Another Perfect Addition For My Project With My Family And Actress, Jobs Daughter Ketrina Maria Gordon.Thanks,Rollin Ressegieu

If you desire to play Jazz or any other music frankly, cut the bull out and get this book which will tell you how to do it. If you have ever wondered how Joe Pass and others play chords and melody and solo all at the same, this book will let you in on their secret The contents of this book is better than a Berkley education.

I should have bought this sooner. If you don’t understand it initially read it again.

The title is well chosen : this book lists all the possible chords on the 4 middle strings, starting from the different inversions of C7M, then altering those to C7, Cm7, C7b5#9, etc. Of course altering one chord can make it a substitute one for an other (and vice-versa), so through all the books the chords are grouped by their alterations and the corresponding substitutions. There are some musical examples (all written, don't expect any tablature here !) to show their possible uses, and some pages on parallel voicings. Voice-leading is used all through the book.The author advices to do the same work on other groups of strings (1-4, 3-6), but as the book is very dense, you'll need to order another whole life to do so !IMO, this is a nice book, usable to get some ideas, to practice chord reading, to get other substitution chords, but which shouldn't be practiced alone, expecting to become a great jazz player. Its exhaustivity makes it very indigest and far from the way one should learn music, even if (I repeat) there are some great ideas and views. I'm still amazed by the huge work Wilmott accomplished here !I wouldn't advice it for beginners, but if you're a music geek, why not ? ;)

For me, a chord guy , this book is a great investment. An excellent study, a master class of chords in one volume. I am just getting started with it and look forward to the "treasure" within it. This is for advanced players. Trying this book without knowledge of harmony and chord construction will be very difficult. For those with this background this book is like hitting the motherland. Like Ted Greene books, there's a lot here, but worth the work for the outcome of knowledge..You end up being a monster comper.

I can't verify that claim, except by saying that I can't imagine a better book on the subject. It's graduate-level, so you have to hit the ground running: as a preliminary he has you "prepare" all conceivable 6th and 7th chord voicings. The discussion is limited to drop-2 (i.e. where the second-highest note of the theoretical chord is played an octave below e.g. D Major) voicings on strings 2 through 5, so at first the focus seems impossibly narrow for a 240-page book. It's filled with every possible combination of the 6th and 7th voicings with 9th, 11th, and 13th degrees. For a particular combination there is a discussion of each possible four-note substitution. For each four-note substitution, he lists the playable voicings and gives an example of each. For most of the examples he gives the names of the chords along with the highest note of each chord, which tells you which inversion you're expected to play. This convention can be frustrating, but I found it fun once I got the hang of it. There are discussions of the rules: how low you can play various scale degrees, generally avoiding flatted ninth intervals, etc. Other musical-theoretic topics are discussed in depth.Anyway, if that sounds like your thing, buy this book.

ottimo

Se i concetti di base dell'armonia (costruzione di un accordo, rivolti, voicings, tensioni ecc.) non vi sono chiari, quest'opera vi confonderà solo le idee: in questo caso acquistate un buon manuale di armonia jazz (ad esempio quello della Berklee, o l'ottimo manuale di Berkman) e un valido testo che tratti gli accordi sullo strumento (evitate magari quelli che elencano migliaia di diteggiature da memorizzare - perfettamente inutili - e rivolgetevi piuttosto a testi come quelli di J.Alexander che vi insegnano a costruire i vari drop2/3/2+4 sulla tastiera) prima di affrontare questo testo.Diversamente, questo volume vi metterà in condizione di raffinare enormemente la vostra competenza in ambito armonico. E' monumentale nelle sue quasi 250 pagine, e tratta in maniera approfondita e convincente tutti i temi che un professionista deve assimilare: tensioni, sostituzioni, voice-leading ecc.Un'ultima nota: non aspettatevi intavolature o diagrammi degli accordi - è tutto notato su pentagramma - e la trattazione fa riferimento esclusivamente al voicing drop2, pur essendo i concetti espressi declinabili su tutti i restanti voicings.

Ein Werk, das jeder Gitarrist, der sich für Jazz und Fusion interessiert, haben sollte. Es bietet Stoff für ein ganzes Musikerleben und ist doch nur ein Ausschnitt. Man arbeitet wohl nicht jeden Tag damit, aber immer mal wieder. Der Autor verzichtet auf die üblichen Akkord-Diagramme und notiert nur die höchste Note und gibt die Akkordbezeichnung dazu. Die Ambivalenz der Voicings in Bezug auf ihre Funktion ist erstaunlich. Wer diese Voicings zielsicher anwenden kann, ist ein großes Stück weiter gekommen. Empfehlenswert.

Fatastic reference bopok if nothing else. Huge amount in here.