Sooner or later, any serious guitar player realizes that a solid theoretical foundation is the only way to go. Your ear can only take you so far, that’s when your music theory can kick in and remove any musical obstacles in your way to fully expressing yourself.

It seems quite simple… you just have to go to the music store and pick up a theory book and off we go; away we go alright…pick up the wrong book and you’ll end up more confused than ever before.

Music fact of life #1: Not all theory books are the same.

I remember when I started my first job, it was in a music store giving music classes; I had a bit of a reputation as a musician in the local area playing in dance bands etc, and since I had already sold quite a bit of music equipment for the music store based on my track record, they thought I would be the obvious choice. ; Yes

the store had a potential guitar or amp customer, I’d leave my mom a message, then after school I’d go down to the store and show her the gear.

It all started well, I stumbled and stumbled during guitar lessons, I’m not sure who learned more, me or my students. I know that I learned a lot every day, mainly about how not to teach.

Anyway, very early in the article, the store manager informed me that if I was going to continue teaching for the store, I would have to be “qualified”; He didn’t know exactly what that implied, but it sounded terrifying.

It turned out that what he meant was that he needed to be formally qualified… just being able to play guitar wasn’t good enough if he was going to teach them guitar.

The good news was that they were going to pay for my lessons, so that was great… there was even more good news: I could go to the theory lessons instead of having to work in the shop.

So I started my theory lessons and pretty soon I was frustrated, confused and stumped… the things I knew worked at the bandstand the night before didn’t match up with the theory lesson the next day.

The more confused he was, the more determined he was to find the “truth”; so i started studying with other teachers to augment my “paid” music store lessons… boy did that make things worse; it seemed as if each theory teacher had his own point of view on things, many basic concepts did not coincide.

To summarize… after a lot of playing, thinking and researching I discovered…

Music fact of life #2: there are different types of theory… in fact, there are three different types of theory: classical, jazz, and rock/blues.

These are very broad categories, they are all important and the whole musician needs to be aware of their similarities and differences.

The world is full of traditional books on classical theory, so I won’t discuss them here. Modern theory applied to improvisation and the music of our time is what interests me… it’s great to know what happened 400 years ago, but unlikely to help you secure that rock concert next Friday night.

Here are my top three books on modern guitar theory.

Qualification: modern method for guitar – By William Leavitt (Berklee Press)

Available from: Berklee.com

General description: If you want to get on the ground floor and study guitar and guitar fretboard theory, this is the place to start!

Available in three volumes; the first sixty pages of volume one cover the basics of reading music in the first position of the guitar.

The second part of Berklee volume one introduces the five standard fingering patterns for reading music on the fretboard.

Qualification: jazz studios – by Bruce Clarke (ed clinch points to text)

Available from: BillyHydemusic.com.au

General description:A fantastic book that takes off when volume one of Berklee’s book ends; the Jazz Studies book is ideal for use in conjunction with Berklee Volume Two.

Fantastic explanations of how the concepts of modes, cycle 5 and cycle 7 work. Jazz Studies is a great introduction to the world of improvisation. If you have studied traditional theory, this book will “blow the lid” off of how you view theory. Step by step instructions, very easy to understand. Highly recommended.

Qualification: “See It – Hear It / Hear It – Touch It” – by Dick Grove

Available from: DickGrove.com

General description:A full course with DVD/text instruction from the same man Dick Grove, you could easily pay $100,000 in college instruction and never get this kind of tuition.

Everyone learns differently. DVDs bring the written text to life and help maintain student motivation and enthusiasm. Any of these individual courses or the combination of the three theoretical texts will clear the way for you to express yourself with the guitar.