Chord dictionary

[Papadoc]

Any suggestions on a good chord dictionary to have? It would be real handy to have a quick source to go to and find various choices for Fm7 for instance. I've seen ads for Guy's Grids in Acoustic Guitar. Price seems steep, but it appears pretty exhaustive as a reference. I have Guitar Toolkit app for my iPhone, and it's helpful, but limited.

[Dad3353]

Good evening, Papadoc...

You'll get many replies to this, I expect; here's my suggestion...
I use Guitar Pro on my PC (not just for this, it does an awful lot more...), but it has a quite complete dico, with 3 levels of difficulty.
For Fm7 it gives me, in 'Difficult' mode, 71 different fingerings (or 'voicings' as they say here...). Here's a screenshot (see thumbnail below...), and a link to their site...

Guitar Pro (US)

It's cheap for what it does, imho.
(Of course, I have no relation whatever other than satisfied user; this is not advertising for the product, just a reply to your question...).

I learned a lot from making my own, at one time, using pencil and paper, but a quick look-up is, I admit, very useful.
Hope this helps...

[Papadoc]

Holy smoke! Quite a product there. I've been lazy since starting this whole learning jazz thing last year. I have avoided the pencil and staff paper thing, but I suspect if I sat down and actually wrote out the chords, then tried to discover for myself on the fretboard the voicings, I would learn more. But it seems like so much tedium...a nice chord book for easy reference would be nice. Thanks for the heads up on Guitar Pro. I'll think about it.

[Dad3353]

Papadoc...

Whilst I'm here, let me shamelessly plug my 'violon d'Ingres'...

I've been going through the Mickey Baker method for 40 years now. I'm now on page 6 (now who's lazy..?). It's damned good (again, imho...). You may not like it, but, seeing the very low cost, enormous 'bang for buck'.
(The Fm7 highlighted in the screenshot is chord 4 of 26 on page 1 of his book; page 2 starts getting it, and the others...) into context. Lot's of fun for years...
Just a thought...

[Papadoc]

Micky Baker #1 is open on my coffee table as we speak. I'm stuck on lesson four, because I don't want to sit and write down the transpositions in lesson five! I'm still in the top ten for laziness.

[nomelite]

Besides Mickey Baker (and before Ted Greene's Chord Chemistry and other comprehensive ones) try this one: it's that good:

Amazon.com: Mel Bay Rhythm Guitar Chord System (9780786635337): Inc. Mel Bay Publications: Books

[Dad3353]

Originally Posted by Papadoc

Micky Baker #1 is open on my coffee table as we speak. I'm stuck on lesson four, because I don't want to sit and write down the transpositions in lesson five! I'm still in the top ten for laziness.

What a coincidence..!
You may already have this, but just in case, here's a link to Michael Joyce's web site, devoted to MB Vol I...
Michael Joyce, Mickey Baker Vol I
...On this (excellent...) site, there is mention of TabEdit, so as to hear the exercises. Guitar Pro can read '.tef' files, so the examples in the book become much easier to understand.
I would have loved this complementary information had been available 40 years ago!
Incidentally, may I encourage you (lazy as you are..:-) to 'bite the bullet', and get past Lesson 5? It's not that big a deal (I didn't use score paper, just plain, aptly named, foolscap, and found it quite easy onced started...). The following couple of lessons start to 'unlock' the doors, although quite some time is required to get them into the fingers, and head.
I suppose that you already have a, or several, 'Real Book(s)'? I find, for applying MB, that the 'Vanilla' book is marvellous, as the chords given are the 'ordinary' chords, before substitution and embellishment found in other Real Books. This enables me to work out and play around with my own (poor...) efforts, and better understand how and why the more sophisticated renderings work. Here's a site run by Ralp Patt; absolute 'top notch', for me...
Ralph Patt, Vanilla Real Book
But enough..! Back to the fretboard. Bon courage...

[FatJeff]

Originally Posted by Papadoc

I have avoided the pencil and staff paper thing, but I suspect if I sat down and actually wrote out the chords, then tried to discover for myself on the fretboard the voicings, I would learn more.

Yes. You will learn the most when you figure these things out for yourself.

My suggestion: learn your drop-2 voicings in root position on all 3 string sets (6-5-4-3, 5-4-3-2, 4-3-2-1). Do this for all the common 7ths: M7, m7, m7b5, dom7, dim7, aug7. Once you have these down, start altering one of the notes in the chord to get other more exotic voicings, like 9, #9, b9, #11, 13, b13, etc.

But it seems like so much tedium...a nice chord book for easy reference would be nice.

You don't get something for nothing. Most of us on this forum have spent the time to go through learning the chords systematically on our own. There are no shortcuts. Also, there are no shortcuts. I started with the drop-2s as I mentioned above (and all their inversions, which quadruples the number of shapes) a year ago. I'm still learning them. After I feel I really have them down, I will move on to drop-3 shapes.

There are no shortcuts. :-)

[paynow]

One of the best books I've worked through:

Amazon.com: The Chord Factory: Build Your Own Guitar Chord Dictionary (9780876390757): Jon Damian: Books

It's a great deal of work, but it's worth it.

A couple of websites had listed that it comes with a CD; it does not which I found out when mine didn't come with one and I contacted the author.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

It's great to get ideas and tips from books and, oh, here! But the best tool for learning chord grips is your fretboard. Work them out, too.

[jayv999]

Ted Greene's "Chord Chemistry" is a must for all guitarists.

[Papadoc]

There are no shortcuts. Funny thing--when all this started for me last year, I told myself (and my wife) that I won't even start to think about the expense of buying a jazz guitar till I learn at least one tune. Here it is many months later, and I know more about music theory than I previously thought existed, I've heard more jazz guitarists than ever, I know scales, and modes and chords; but barely feel able to play even the simplest tune yet. I had no idea how deep the water was when I jumped in. And this is not a complaint. The whole thing is actually great. I love learning and making music. But it's all way more than anticipated.
Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll likely buy a book or two, but what I really will do is get past lesson five in the Baker book, and start with the building of chords myself, to get to know the fretboard better.

[Claudi]

Before I registered this website I could simply play major/minor and power chords, some 7th chord and something else. Came from a rock background. After registering here I discovered how to find the intervals on the fretboard and practiced on my chord book and found out some errors in my chord book. Since then I started building the chords by myself. Come on, Papadoc. Give it a try!

[rdc49]

Originally Posted by Dad3353

What a coincidence..!
You may already have this, but just in case, here's a link to Michael Joyce's web site, devoted to MB Vol I...
Michael Joyce, Mickey Baker Vol I
...On this (excellent...) site, there is mention of TabEdit, so as to hear the exercises. Guitar Pro can read '.tef' files, so the examples in the book become much easier to understand.
I would have loved this complementary information had been available 40 years ago!
Incidentally, may I encourage you (lazy as you are..:-) to 'bite the bullet', and get past Lesson 5? It's not that big a deal (I didn't use score paper, just plain, aptly named, foolscap, and found it quite easy onced started...). The following couple of lessons start to 'unlock' the doors, although quite some time is required to get them into the fingers, and head.
I suppose that you already have a, or several, 'Real Book(s)'? I find, for applying MB, that the 'Vanilla' book is marvellous, as the chords given are the 'ordinary' chords, before substitution and embellishment found in other Real Books. This enables me to work out and play around with my own (poor...) efforts, and better understand how and why the more sophisticated renderings work. Here's a site run by Ralp Patt; absolute 'top notch', for me...
Ralph Patt, Vanilla Real Book
But enough..! Back to the fretboard. Bon courage...

Hi,

Just exactly what I came here to find. I had seen this breakdown of Bakers book before but I'd lost the link. Thanks so much for posting it. It's a real help.

[Moonray]

About getting stuck on Mickey Baker Vol 1.
Don't write it out!
Just do it....I was taught by a very good player, and a real
gentleman....back c. 1969 [boy does that date me]
He told me to do all the exercises on the guitar.
....PLAY the chord...SAY what you play.....BUT the trick is
say the next chord you are ABOUT TO PLAY...so you are going towards
the "known" as it were.....rather than playing the chord...and then
naming it after the event.
The idea is to be able to DO this..not to able to write on a piece of paper!
This may proceed fairly slowly at the outset [it certainly did for me]
...but I kept the faith and pretty soon it became automatic....and.....
No Book!
I suspect the effort, albeit of a different type, ie: the act of writing the exercise down would be a less interesting prospect than
doing the work on the guitar...
I suggest thinking it out as you go until you can do it in
real time.
If I may quote our esteemed colleague Pierre ..
Time on the instrument.

[TruthHertz]

Who are the jazz players you like? Would you like to be able to play within that genre? Can you accept that jazz is a music that requires some amount of knowledge?
Please, save yourself a LOT of time and trouble by learning some theory. It's not hard at all. Know what your choices are when you see Maj7 on a chart; be aware of what notes you might have available and why. This is a great start:

Originally Posted by FatJeff

Yes. You will learn the most when you figure these things out for yourself.

My suggestion: learn your drop-2 voicings in root position on all 3 string sets (6-5-4-3, 5-4-3-2, 4-3-2-1). Do this for all the common 7ths: M7, m7, m7b5, dom7, dim7, aug7. Once you have these down, start altering one of the notes in the chord to get other more exotic voicings, like 9, #9, b9, #11, 13, b13, etc.


There are no shortcuts. :-)

But might I suggest this: Get a piece of guitar grid paper that covers a several octaves. You can take a blank piece of tab paper and draw an 20 or so fret lines on it. Now mark in all the scale degrees of the chromatic scale:

1 b2 2 ...and so on
5 b6 6
-3 3 4
-7 7 1
4 b5 5
1 b2 2

something like this. (b2=#1 and 2=9) and keep this as your big picture of the fingerboard. When you learn a new voicing, you can see it on the chart and see that "hey that b9 is right there next to 9, I can see it's all connected."
More importantly, you will see where else you might have played it and what your choices are. Now you might ask: Why go through the trouble when you can just look it up? What if from the time you were a child, you got a new map for each place in your neighborhood you wanted to go? That's right, seeing the big picture is not really the hard way. You expand a little bit at a time. How about one voicing a week? You'd learn in very short time that chord dictionaries are very limiting.

Think of it as going through life with an English phrasebook with tourist phrases. Did the people that assembled that book really learn that way?

If you do decide to get some kind of dictionary, then you might also think about getting yourself a copy of Mick Goodrick's Advancing Guitarist. If you look at jazz guitar as a new land to be navigated, this is the closest thing to getting the big picture in one volume. It also makes the process very satisfying and fun.

Just one suggestion. Do have fun and good luck!
David

[czardas]

Originally Posted by Dad3353

For Fm7 it gives me, in 'Difficult' mode, 71 different fingerings (or 'voicings' as they say here...).

That's not bad. I get approximately as many shapes, but they exclude awkward gaps between strings. It's based on an algorithm I wrote.

[m78w]

I put a jazz guitar chord dictionary up on my site for free if you want to check it out, not the be all and end all, but a good reference for Drop 2, Drop 3, Drop 2 and 4 and closed position voicings. Check it out.

Jazz Guitar Chords | MattWarnockGuitar.com

[pingu]

Its good to work out the top 4 string inversions like this

ex of Fmaj7

Ist string fret 1 tonic F
2nd string fret 1 5th ie C
3rd string fret 2 3rd ie A
4th string fret 2 maj 7th ie E

then up to the next inversion
with the 3rd A on the top string

string 1 fret 5 = 3rd
string 2 fret 5 = maj 7th
string 3 fret 5 = 5th
string 4 fret 3 = Tonic

then up to the next inv (unusual voicing but nice)

8 5th
6 tonic
9 maj7
7 3rd

then up to the last one

12 maj7
10 3rd
10 tonic
10 5th

Take it round a few different Keys

then another week do the Dom 7th invs in the same way
remember you only change the maj7 E notes down a half step to Eb
Very systematic and usable stuff

then another week do the minor 7 chords
you only now need to flatten the Dom7 chords 3rds A nat to Ab
to get the -7 chords

cool ?

[czardas]

It's just a pity that Guitar Pro uses such strange chord names => 'Fmadd#13' LMAO. While someone else might consider it a feature, I consider it a serious mistake.

[Uyasgali]

Chordbook.com - Learn Guitar Chords, Scales, Guitar Tuner

Has a lot of neat features: chords and inversions, build a chord and get it identified. Remembers your chords that you save for future reference. Plays your chord. Build, ID and play scales. etc...

It is a free online service.

[JNGuitar]

I find chord dictionaries to be a waste of time. In my opinion, finding out the chord formulas Min7 having Root b3rd, 5th and b7th finding them all over the neck and then figuring out each chord with 1 - root on the top 2 - 3rd on the top 3 - 5th on the top ect is a better method. Do the same thing but instead of the top, make them the bottom (bass note). Then you'll have your own chord dictionary. It'll mean something to you and you'll know how all of these are derived.