You"ve just learned four new chords. How will you use them? Do they relate to each other in any way? How will you remember them? These are questions and problems that most beginning players encounter. This book addresses these problems by teaching chord progressions. (No man is an island, and neither is a chord.) Each chord is shown within the context of several different progressions, and most importantly, the theory behind these relationships and constructions is carefully and clearly explained. In addition, only the chords most often used by professional musicians are presented. You can also download MP3 files of the chord progressions found in this book for free. Links for these files are provided in the menu on the left. This book provides a solid basis of music theory for the serious student and is the required text at both New York University and Princeton University. EXCERPT 1 The first thing a student must tackle is learning how to read music. A detailed description of the development of music notation is beyond the scope of this book and some inconsistencies (which will appear in italics) have stayed in musical notation, in the course of that development. For the beginner these inconsistencies can be very confusing but inconsistent as it may be, music notation does have a standard for expressing itself visually and by understanding this system a whole new world of music is open to you. In this system a series of lines and spaces are employed to create a visual representation of sound. Each line and space corresponds to a pitch. Each pitch is given a name A, B, C, D, E, F, or G. A clef sign is also used to designate what names each line and space will receive. The reason for the many types of clefs will be explained momentarily. First let us look at the treble clef. The treble clef places the note sequence in the order listed below. This complete system of lines and spaces with a clef sign is called a staff. As can be seen in the examples each line and space corresponds to a different tone. If you want to have pitches higher or lower than the 5 lines and four spaces you can extend the staff by using ledger lines. Ledger lines give you the ability to represent higher and lower pitches by extending the staff, these extended pitches are called ledger line notes. If we extend this idea we run into trouble as can be seen from the example below. When excessive ledger lines are used, reading music becomes very difficult. To alleviate this problem other clefs are employed to make reading these notes that are out of the treble clef"s range easier. The note in the previous example would be found in the bass or F clef on the 2nd space. The following example shows where the notes fall in the bass clef. We will only use the treble clef in this book but a basic understanding of the bass clef is important. EXCERPT 2 Below is a list of the chord tones and tensions for a dominant chord. Once again there is no limit to how many tensions can be in a chord but because the guitar has only 6 strings we are limited to 6 notes. Many times certain chord tones are dropped out so more tension can be placed in the chord. It is very common to drop out the 1 and 5 of the chord in order to add more tensions. As you learn each chord, notice which notes are present in each chord. The chord tones and tensions for C7 are as follows: [graphic insert] All the tensions that we learn for each chord can be used as a substitute for the basic chord type. Dominant chords have many possibilities for adding and combining tensions. For instance if we have a C7 chord we could substitute C7#11 or C7#9b13 etc. Theoretically any combination is possible. Usually tensions are not combined that are a half step apart. For example, you usually don"t have a dominant chord which contains b9 and natural 9.......