The Black Book - Instant Guitar Chords

I initially bought this book because I was looking for a good quick reference for chords. I've tried various things before I decided to buy a book, including writing out all the chord variations that I find, drawing out finger shapes from chord diagrams, etc. Eventually, I decided that I need a pre-defined system in an encyclopedic format - otherwise I would keep grabbing specific information out of context.This book does a few things well. One, there are a lot of chords. They are all the common chords that you will find in rock, jazz, and blues. They are available in every key, in well-labeled diagrams (with fingering, tone chords, fret, deadened strings, everything else you would expect), and a standard notation of the chord. This book also has several available positions of each chord.The information is presented in a very organized fashion. Each key is organized by the chord quality. First, you find all the major chords. Next, all the minor chords. Following are the dominants, diminished, and augmented/suspended chords (each building in complexity progressively). While it becomes clear, with rigorous study, that the positions wrap around, it is nonetheless useful that each key is presented on its own in relationship to its other positions.This part of the book has two slight problems. First, all chords are in root position - there are no inversions. While this is advantageous to someone who first starts out playing jazz for example, this bit of information becomes useful once you start studying extended tonality. Second problem, the standard notation only denotes the closed position of the chord in root position. Although the notes in the chord a verbally spelled out, it helps to see the staff representation to help visualize the chord - at least for me.The last three sections (Power chords, slash chords, transposing) are pretty useless. They hint at presentation of certain theoretical concepts, but really fall short of even a sufficient cursory overview. Luckily, they don't comprise a large portion of the book.Overall, this is a nice, concise reference. The quality of the cover, pages, and binding is good. Stuff is easy to find - each key is tabbed on the side for easy access. There is no text, only the diagrams. If this sounds like what you're looking for, this book is for you.

The black book of Guitar chords is relatively small and portable. It's 269 pages of chord tabs and all the different voicings you may or may not desire. It includes power chords, slash chords, and a small section on transposing. If you seek any information on theory, this is not the book for you. It contains no information on theory. However, if you are looking for hundreds of different ways to play chords, the black book of guitar chords is wonderful.