After around 3 years of weekly study I have almost made my way through this absolute bible of harmony for guitar (only the final setion to go, and it looks like even Ted got a bit bored while writing this part haha). I feel like it was worth it although still not sure about the middle section giving 100 examples of voice leading from the I to IV and then having you complete each example through the entire major scale - they are good warmups I guess.
Anyway, anyone else worked through this beast? Given the knowledge Ted had stored in his brain I feel it's a worthy journey for anyone serious about understanding harmony on guitar. It has definitely given me more tools for doing chord melody arrangements of songs. The first 20 or so pages would also be good stand alone, as they just give a list of triad and major 7 chord shapes.
My favorite aspect of the book was that all the chords are presented in context of a progression with voice leading, so you are not just learning chord shapes and you are mixing different shapes together. Through the examples, Ted also constantly shows you new ways of thinking about chords as melodies, and multiple ways to harmonize the same melody, which is cool.
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I feel the key takeaways from it are the flexibility with chords that Ted tries to show you, in terms of how you can voice lead and also how much inner voice movement you can achieve with even basic chords. It's almost like he gives a new insight every few pages.
The other good thing is, when I look at transcriptions of Ted's arrangements of songs now, there are few surprises as his approach and vocabulary is covered very well in the book.
Congrats JJ - that is proper application.