Got quite a few chords under your fingers?

Time to put together your own chord book! 🙌

I know there are tons of chord books on the market, but there is some value to building your own.

There's nothing better than personalizing a product to your needs! After all, you know yourself better than anyone else.

So, let me show you why and how you can create your own chord book! :)

Why You Should Build Your Own Chord Book

First off, most of those chord books are chock-full with chords you may never use. When making your own chord book, you can fill it with chords that you need to know for songs you're actually going to play.

Sometimes it's not necessary or beneficial to learn every variant of every chord out there. Unless you're Ted Greene, author of the legendary Chord Chemistry book. An exciting read for musical theory fanatics like :)

The process of putting your chord book together is helpful in many ways. You'll be able to put all the chords you want in there and writing them in the way you like to play them!

You're creating a visual representation of it in your mind, committing it to memory, and making sense of it. How awesome is that? :)

While making the chord book, you can even write down what the notes in the chords are. This becomes especially helpful when you go on to study more music theory.

For now, you can start recognizing patterns in the notes. This will help you understand how each note functions within the chord. Then, you'll be able to see how you can manipulate the notes in a chord to get a specific sound!

How To Create Your Guitar Chord Book

To start, download some blank chord box paper in the DOWNLOADS tab above. I included a few variations so you can choose the style that suits you.

Print out seven pages. That way, you can have one page for your A chords, one for your B chords, one for your C chord, and so on!

Later on, you can add pages for your A# and Ab chords and whatever else you would like.

Organize it all in a binder and keep it handy!

Great Guitar Chord Books To Buy

Later in your journey, you will almost certainly want to get some chord books. These are great to explore new chord forms you might not think of on your own.

Here are some excellent chord books I recommend:

The Mickey Baker Jazz Guitar book is a classic,
Reaching For The Uncommon Chord by Allan Holdsworth,
Joe Pass Jazz Chords book

So many options out there! Try and avoid the ones marketed at 1001 chords you must know and other clickbait titles. They're most often full of silly chords to make up the numbers!

Next up, let's have some fun with the C major scale for beginners :)