Resources

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Calculate Chords - Mini-Course

 Am9? F#M7? Do you have to search for chord charts when learning a new song? Do you find that sometimes chords played the way they show in those little chord boxes just don't sound right?

I learned how to figure out pretty much any chord by reading the chord notation. This is an easy (well, easier) way to learn to play all those obscure chords.

I created a mini-course document on how I do it.

There are three separate parts to the mini-course. Learn all three and you'll unlock your ability to calculate and play pretty much any chord.
Download my mini-course doc here!

Once you understand what all the gobbledygook is for, you switch to using the reference doc until you don't need either of them any more.

There are a million (well, maybe a hundred) chord diagram templates on the Internet you can use to record chords that you figure out. Recording chord diagrams is a great way to increase retention.

UPDATE: I think this is too much to put on one sheet. I'm going to break it into 3. 

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Learning the Notes

I've been trying to memorize all the notes on the fingerboard by rote. It's painful. I got to thinking, I'm trying to memorize the notes so that I can use them to build chords. What if I used the building of chords to memorize the notes? Ooooh... More on this later.

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External Resources

Here are some resources I have used.

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Justin is a great instructor and guitarist in his own right. He offers both free and paid lessons. For all types of guitar music, you'll learn about the fretboard, chords, and the mechanics of playing. I bought 2 of his books and they really helped me. As you can see, he's number one.

Justin Sandercoe

JustinGuitar.com

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A free site to learn about chord substitution: LotusMusic.com
They have lots of theory articles.

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Want more theory specific to guitar? Try HubGuitar, a free site with some good learning tools.

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OpenMusicTheory is an indepth music theory resource. It's like an online textbook, and it's free.

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If you're stuck on a chord, want to check your chord calculations, or to use until you've mastered chord calculation, jguitar will identify and build chords as you need them. I use it for the really tricky ones. It has a wonderful chord-namer tool.

Pick out the chord and play it to see how it sounds.

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