I’ve been a fan Noel Johnston’s playing and teaching for years now. I first checked out his book, Voicing Modes back in 2017. Since then, I’ve been following his work closely.
I have reviewed Noel’s other books, The 4-Note Universe: A Systematic Exploration of 4-Note Chords & Arpeggios with Études for Guitar, Modal Etudes and Voicing Modes – A Chord Voicing Approach to Hearing and Practicing Modes on this site, and this time I’m excited to share my thoughts on his latest release, Creative Guitar Fundamentals.
The book is a pretty big volume at 213 pages and is divided into 17 parts:
- Introduction
- Raw Technique
- Learn the fingerboard
- Pentatonics
- Keys & “Grips”
- Closed Triads
- Open or “Spread” Triads
- Closed Triad Arpeggios
- Putting it all together. “Guitar Burpees”
- On 7-note “tonality”
- Scales Are Fundamental
- Time is Fundamental
- 7th Chord Voicings and Arpeggios
- Organizing chords by MELODY
- More 7th-chord arpeggios: with time-feel options
- On learning tunes
- Parting thoughts
In the very beginning of this book, Noel addresses that in order to improve your guitar playing, you can do that by ear, by eye and by mind. Going deeper into that, we get a selection of technical exercises that focus on the purely physical demands of guitar playing, to help coordinate our hands. This section alone honestly is the kind of stuff I’ve seen sold as separate books. The fact that this is in a single volume is amazing!
Moving to the next part he goes into concepts for learning the fingerboard from note recognition, intervals and into the CAGED system. One particular interesting part here is when he includes both standard open chord shapes and what he calls “contemporary” shapes which are what a typical modern guitar player might reach for instead of the basic shapes. This is the kind of thing that I often emphasize to my students – since the reality of professional guitar playing relies on knowing more beautiful practical guitar chord shapes instead of the standard ones we often see in typical beginner guitar lessons.
This particular section is also honestly the kind of topic that could be its own book(s) like the Scale Connection and Chord Connection books by Dave Eastlee, but in this context, Noel introduces the shapes and fingerings in a “enough information” or “minimum viable information” for us to have a basis for exploration later on. I dig this and it’s interesting to see how Noel’s brain works to format all this information.
Next up, we go into an exploration of closed triads which interestingly Noel includes major, minor, diminished, augmented AND sus4. Personally I’ve included sus2 AND sus4 in my own teaching, as separate sounds even though they are inversions of each other. To solidify the information presented here, we also get 8 etudes that provide us workout to internalize these closed triads in real way.
These somewhat remind me of the William Leavitt etudes in the Modern Method for Guitar series from Berklee Press. What is even more interesting is that the etudes are really suggestions for other possible etudes that one could do as Noel writes: (chords generated, randomly generate your own random set, and do this – that kinda thing). What a Goodrick/Krantz thing to suggest right? Nice!
The pieces in the book are also especially interesting, and are a real plus point in Noel’s books. So much of typical guitar books just give you the dry information but do not put in context how these things work in real musical situations. I absolutely love it that Noel makes it a point to connect as much as possible everything he teaches into a real world context.
This book has really so much stuff that the reality is Noel could have easily made the book into multiple smaller volumes but instead of making it about the money, he choose the higher path and made this book really about getting these important concepts and lessons into a single book, so that more guitarists can become even better guitar players!
Honestly I could go on and on about this book, and because I’ve been checking it out so much, I actually took a longer time to write this review. But… in the end, just like guitar, maybe even a book review is a work in progress, and I just have to publish this for now.
All in all, this is an amazing book in the lineage of great books by legends such as Mick Goodrick, Ted Greene, Howard Roberts and Don Mock. If you are serious about guitar, you have to get a copy of this book and use it. Strongly recommended! I, for one plan to stare at a single page for as much as I can and then extract the exercises and lessons into my playing.
On a side note – In a perfect world, I would honestly love to study and hang out with Noel as much as possible because… every time I check out what he does, I am inspired and get more excited about guitar playing and the possibilities! In fact, if you are interested, do check out his Creative Guitar Fundamentals program on Skool – that is I believe like this book but in the format of a online program.
Pros: A unique book written with great care and with tons of amazing tips, guides and insights.
Cons: None.
TLDR: If you’re serious about guitar, get this book now and start shedding. Your ears and audiences will probably thank you for it.
You can get this book here:
https://noeljohnston.com/merch.html
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