Fretboard Freedom Guitar Book & Online Audio - Master Guitar Scales & Chords for Beginners & Advanced Players - Perfect for Practice, Lessons & Home Learning

Final update: after 6 months of working through this book I can say it have improved my playing a lot especially when used in conjunction with Guitar Aerobics and Rhythm Guitar 365.The method of this book becomes clear once you get towards the end. By the end of the book you will have a much better intuitive understanding and feel for the fretboard and will be much more confident playing up the fretboard.One thing that it took me too long to really understand was that the weekly chord shapes are more effective when practiced as arpeggios. Not just as full chords.Week 36 update: almost 3/4 complete and down the home stretch. As you go through the second half, the exercises do get more difficult, but remain a steady progression. I have not gotten stuck on any particular lesson that I couldn’t at least do 90% speed after 30 minutes of focused practice. I have enjoyed this book even if it’s feels a bit repetitive. The great thing about this book, is just when the exercises start to get familiar, they change to something new. So there are similar exercises, which actually helps to integrate what you are learning. Toward the end of the book the focus shifts away from soloing over one chord to a chord progression. I kinda wish that there was a sequel that just focused on soloing over chord progressions using his system. But all that you need is here.Week 26 update: I still really like this book and still recommend it. If anything it becomes much easier as the week have gone by. That is because chord shapes, scale shapes and arpeggios shapes are same every 4 weeks. This may seem to make it repetitive, but it really makes those shapes become intuitive and natural. You are really going to improve your fluency all over the fretboard which is the point of the book. The licks are varied and it is an excellent approach to play the same lick/riff in 5 different positions. While the recommended approach is to do one exercise a day, I have found that the Monday-Friday exercises are more effective to do in a slightly modified routine. Specifically: every day spend 10 minutes on the arpeggio and another 10 on the scale as a warmup. Then on Monday learn the primary lick of the week (30 to 60 minutes). Once you have the primary lick down Tuesday through Friday is pretty easy and you can really focus on moving that lick around the fretboard. If you practice the arpeggio and scale every day as a warmup, Saturday and Sunday will be a lot easier. With this approach, I have found you can do 2 weeks in one week in about 1-2 hours a day, especially as you get farther into the book since the chords, scales and appeggio shapes are the same every 4 weeks. That means by week 26 you have done each arpeggio and chord shape 6 times and the scale shape 12 times. As The arpeggio shapes and scale shapes become memorized, I would focus more on the chord shapes. Some chord shapes are pretty hard, and are more about being able to play them in an arpeggiated style as opposed to a strumming all the notes at once. This is where the magic really happens with this book as you connect the arpeggios and scales to the chord shapes. I would only memorize those licks that you want to integrate into your soloing bag of tricks.Week 12 review:I love the approach of this book and the authors other 365 series of books: Rhythm Guitar 365 and Guitar Aerobics. All three books could form the basis of a great daily practice routine.What makes this book and the other 365 books great is that they give you something new to work on every day. This is a great way to engage in deliberate practice and improve your play dramatically. You don’t have to think about or plan your routine, you just need to open the book and go.Fretboard Freedom is an excellent book to build: Scale vocabulary, internalize scales shapes and really learn your way around the fretboard confidently. You will see that the fretboard becomes smaller and much more intuitive as you work through this book.This book has a rather focused approach on what is covered and I love it for it. It is not a beginners book, but it is also not an advanced book. I would say it is the hardest of the author’s book in this series. But he gives you lots of reputation to really get the knowledge down cold. You defiantly get your money’s worth. It progresses at a very manageable pace, but I found that one lesson/riff a night was pretty much as fast as I could go. His other books, I could get through two or three, especially at the beginning.The audio samples are good and very helpful to understand what you need to play. I have found that it is helpful to practice the week’s scales every day then do the day's lesson.If you really want to supercharge your guitar progress I recommend getting all three of his 365 books and do a lesson or two a day from each for a year, I guarantee you will see dramatic results. Will you be Steve Vai? No, but you will be able to taller Steve Vai’s famous 10 hour practice routine.Don’t skip the audio files, use them to really see how well you are playing.