Chord Cookbook

Chord Cookbook explores several of the most powerful polyphonic wonders of the guitar – chord systems, flavors and applications. The creative resource and firepower of Chord Cookbook will feed you flurries of ideas for vamps, original songs and arrangements.

Chord Cookbook takes your ears to school so that you can identify chord “flavors” and systems when listening to or learning your favorite tunes. But that’s just the start. The real firepower behind Chord Cookbook is how the course presents and organizes chord systems and applications to teach you the how, why, what and when for performance, accompaniment, composition and arrangement applications.

Chord Cookbook is an unusual course of study. You’ll likely grow accustomed to referencing Chord Cookbook frequently (although this course is NOT a chord dictionary). There’s no real beginning or end – you’re encouraged to start your exploration anywhere within the course. And while Chord Cookbook is not a methodology, there’s an underlying organization of material, ranging from the theoretical to the practical, which connects it all in a very logical and cognitive way. In short, Chord Cookbook guides your selection and application of chords to “flavor” the songs you play, arrange and write.

Your exploration takes you through 35 categories of chord systems and flavors with performance examples, breakdowns, theoretical analysis and an extensive compendium of reference charts and related information.

You’ll learn how to apply open position chords up the neck, barre chords without the barre, closed voicings, pedal tones in chord progressions, counterpoint, contrary motion and melodic movement, inversions, triads, power chord triads and ways to expand them, quartal harmony and dozens of other approaches. You’ll also learn to classify chords by their “flavor” to make it easier to recognize chords used by your favorite artists.

All of these concepts are covered, demonstrated and analyzed in depth. Chord Cookbook focuses primarily on rock, rhythm and blues and popular music.

Dutch recording artist and top European guitar educator, Matthieu Brandt, has invested several years’ researching and compiling the curriculum for Chord Cookbook. Brandt, who also authored TrueFire’s highly popular Jump Blues and Slap, Frail and Thump courses, is considered one of the most thorough, creative and insightful educators in the biz.