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Beyond the joy of playing guitar.
Three signposts for the intermediate player who feels lost.

The real reason we play guitar is probably immersion, and being moved.

Focusing on your fingers, letting yourself follow the flow of sound. That comfortable state of total immersion, where the usual noise in your head disappears entirely. Playing like that — truly "alive" — has the power not only to move the listener, but to deeply move the player too.

What you need to feel that, always, isn't fast fingers — it's real fundamentals, the kind that create good rhythm and a good feel.

A supreme method, refined at Berklee College of Music, the world's foremost music education institution, and responsible for producing countless world-class musicians.
Why not step out of a daily routine of just tracing tab, and make a way of understanding music that lasts a lifetime your own?

1. Play Guitar with Your Ears and Your Feel

Dedicated to every guitar lover — a classic that changes how you see the fundamentals

  • "I want to write my own phrases, not just trace tab."
  • "I want to play with confidence in my own rhythm."
  • "I want to play something 'alive' that reaches the listener."

If any of that sounds like you, this is the first book we want you to pick up.

Just as daily meals sustain our bodies, daily fundamentals sustain your playing. But most people turn that practice into nothing but mechanical finger exercise.
Every exercise in this book is simple, yet proven and actually used at Berklee. Feel for yourself the discovery that a small shift in perspective can pull endless learning out of the basic practice everyone already does.

2. Play Guitar with a Living Groove

Getting to the truth of "rhythm feel," and breathing life into your playing

  • "No matter how well I lock to the metronome, it never feels good."
  • "Without a track or drums playing, I lose the rhythm partway through."

Your technique keeps improving, but somehow your playing never sounds cool... That stuck feeling isn't a lack of technique — it's a lack of groove.

This isn't just a book of rhythm-keeping exercises. It's a book that builds the core of musical feel: how you sense rhythm with your whole body.
Strongly recommended for guitarists on the verge of giving up, telling themselves "I just wasn't born with rhythm." A moment is coming when your playing shifts from mechanical to vividly alive.

3. The Triad Approach: Conquer the Guitar with Three Notes

Change how you see the fretboard, and turn your ideas directly into sound

  • "I've learned to copy a few songs and memorized chord shapes, but I can't get past that."
  • "Even looking at a chord progression, I don't know where or what to solo."

To freely build phrases or improvise a solo, you need to see the connection between chords and melody in your head.
The key that opens that door is the triad — a chord's basic form, built from just three notes.

Music theory that looks difficult at first becomes surprisingly intuitive to apply to the fretboard with this approach. Once you see how the whole fretboard connects, your ideas flow straight out as guitar sound.

Author Profile

Tomo Fujita

Author: Tomo Fujita
Professor of guitar at Berklee College of Music. He has taught there for over 30 years since 1993, with former students including world-class musicians such as John Mayer and Eric Krasno.
He also teaches Japanese students, and his own teaching method, built around groove, is highly regarded worldwide. As a player, he remains active on the world stage with powerful, blues-rooted improvisation.

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生きたグルーヴでギターが弾ける本【増補版】

Tomo Fujita

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Product Info

Written in Japanese.

Groove is the source of the excitement and comfort in every kind of guitar playing.

Piling on knowledge while leaving your basic sense of groove behind won't fix stiff, awkward playing. No matter how much you polish technique, without groove the music turns mechanical and flat.

This book gathers the effective rhythm and groove training that Tomo Fujita selected from his class and private lessons at Berklee College of Music.

Each exercise is simple, but repeating them builds groove from the ground up.

You play it as written but it never sounds cool somehow. No matter how much you practice, it never feels good. You've given up, thinking you just weren't born with rhythm...

This book is for guitarists carrying worries like these. First published in 2010, this expanded edition adds a new chapter (Chapter 3: video-linked).

<CONTENTS>

■1 If your heart doesn't groove, your playing won't either

■2 Expressing groove through singing

■3 Combining quarter notes and eighth notes

■4 Feeling the bass line in your body

■5 Digging into shuffle riffs

■6 Savoring rich harmony

■7 Swing leads to funk

■8 Making your guitar solos groove

■9 Coloring everyday life with groove

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