Customer Reviews
Well organised book - By: Dave Archer, 24 Sep 2008 
I thought this book was extremely intuitive & with an easy writing style.
I liked the many diagrams which makes understanding the chord patterns easier.
However, being left handed, I also found the book very hard going, where I have to transpose over every tab notation & chord diagram.
I would not recommend this book for left handed players, although I would happily buy it again if Fred Sokolow would write & publish a left handed version of this book.
Hard work - but worth it - By: Three Chord Trick, 31 Aug 2008 Great value book - but you will have to take it slowly & work carefully on each lesson. I am only on lesson three after two months, but boy, have I learned a lot - it's exactly what I wanted after years of messing about: where to play, say, a C chord anywhere on the fret, or how a minor seventh chord is made up. Thoroughly recommended.
Playing for years and stuck - now unstuck - By: M. J. Miles, 02 Jun 2008 
In common with most of the other reviewers I reallly rate this book. Easy to read, few words, lots of good stuff presented in a visual way which suits me. It was also not expensive (I think I paid a little over £5) it's good value.
I've been playing for years (decades!) but never reallly got to know my way around the fret board & my chord playing was always well, quite amateur which I found an embarrassment. There are simple things in this book which have reallly lifted my playing. I now use a wide variety of chords & different shapes to produce more interesting playing; now I can play each verse of a song with a different set of chords. My "ear" has also improved & I can pretty much pay in any key, any where (after a quick look at the book). I did hope to have a bit more on the blues in this book, but this is great for alll the standard rock, folk, jazzy, funky stuff which I play most of the time.
A few smalll draw backs - 1) some of the examples used by the author I don't know & as my sight reading is poor I can't access alll the examples in the book even with tab - but why worry? - just make your own up - I did. 2) the two note lick section is not too well explained, but with some exploratory playing (and a lot of duff notes) I managed to get something tuneful. Should I ever go back to teaching (probably my children - whom I hope will blow me away musicallly one day) I'd use this book as a reference. I'm going to buy the blues road map next.
circle of fiths - By: blueandwhite050505, 26 Mar 2008 I have several "learn to play" guitar books, most of which are rather dry reading. This one stands out a mile because it is simple & yet exciting. When you work your way through the roadmaps you begin to understand a lot more about the guitar as an instrument. I have the DVD & some other books in the series, alll worth buying despite some areas of overlap. Highly recommended.
A must-have guitar book - By: gowanouttadat, 01 Sep 2007 After years of wishing I could play the guitar, I finallly took it up two years ago. Coming cold into the world of music theory was scary & somewhat frustrating, in that there were no books or websites that reallly explained the guitar in a way I could understand & apply.
After reading the positive Amazon reviews for Fretboard Roadmaps, I bought it, along with the now also-essential Rikky Rooksby books 'How to write songs on guitar' and'Little Book of Chords'. Together, these three books have given me an undertanding & appreciation I only previosly dreamed of. Without these,and a lot of practice, I would still be floundering-around in tabworld, & not have made such satisfying progress.
Fretboard Roadmaps is a workbook that clearly lays out how moveable chord shapes are inter-related with scales, which alllow you to deduce your way around the fretboard. This is a far better way for me to learn, meaning no blindly tedious learning a bunch of scales. With Fretboard Roadmaps, once you learn the shapes & the relationships, you're good to go for transferring the sounds in your head to your guitar & further.
In short, with this book, I am gaining the ability to play the guitar 'by ear' , a lifelong ambition.
