Chord Chemistry

This is a classic book on chord theory. If you are looking for chords, this is not the book for you since there are other chord dictionaries available elsewhere that can give you a few thrills. This book is for serious musicians that want to know how to create their own chord voicing and inversions for composing, arranging and performance. It is not for a beginner. It is more suited for intermediate to advanced players. My rating on this book is not based on whether the musician has long fingers or not. Such criteria is ludicrous. Criteria for rating any book should take into consideration the intent of the author, how relevant the information is, and whether the purpose of the book was clearly stated and goals were met. This book is must for any serious guitar player.

This book can be used as a reference book but it is not a compendium of chords. Rather, it deals with several chord concepts such as moving a 4th, substitutions, voicings, melodies, triads, harmonies of scales. As such it can be viewed as a learning tool that will expand your understanding of chords and increase your chord vocabulary.

This book was first published in 1971 and it has been reprinted since. It was published at a time when instructional books were few and far between and has since attained notoriety as the guitarists'"chord bible". In a sense it remains of its time and so the style and presentation shows its age - no tab, no CD, a lot of hand written chord diagrams. However this should not fool the reader into believing it lacks knowledge. This book is comprehensive and requires to be tackled slowly. However it is worth it. This is a GREAT book.

Chord Chemistry is one of the most insiring and complete chord books i have come across. This book is for you if you are prepared to put in the hours and want to learn really great chord voicings. Buy modern chor progressions by the same author, this will help you under stand why his voicings are the way they are, they are designed for voice leading and chord melody.

Don't buy this book unless you have exceptionally long fingers. It's got some good information ,but a lot of the chord voicings are just insane because of this I give it a 3.

every chord you could possibly ever want. not in a real useful form, though.