Rating: 
Summary: The most important guitar book I've EVER read!
Review: If your attempts at learning the guitar have been frustrating and you always thought, "there has to be a better way," then this is your book. Most books treat the guitar like it's no different than a keyboard...and never unlock the basic secret every guitarist must understand: the brilliant organization behind the guitar's tuning. Bill Edwards changes all of that. He shows it doesn't have to be that hard to understand the guitar. Fretboard Logic doesn't try to teach standard music theory, per se. You can learn that anywhere (and you should). Instead, it teaches you how to use that theory and apply it to the guitar and its unique tuning. It's not the "only" guitar or music book you'll ever need. It's just the most important! And yes, you will still have to practice. But it's a lot easier when you can see what you're doing, rather than just using what the author calls the "bootstrap" method (rote memorization of scales & chords) or the "academic" method (trying to understand the guitar using basic building blocks of music theory without ever seeing the "big picture"). I can't recommend it highly enough.
Rating: 
Summary: Ahh, that's why it's tuned that way.
Review: In a world of quick fixes, I'm somewhat surprised at the almost universal acclaim of this text. Maybe the word 'logic' in the title guards the gate. The author takes a unique approach to explain the the guitar's standard tuning. If you've ever wondered why the standard tuning is what it is, then this book is successful in explaining its ergonomic advantages. Expanding these forms to interconnected box patterns is also well done. I think how well you are able to apply this information might depend on whether or not you approach the guitar in terms of patterns or not. What I mean is, do you primarily see an open D as a constellation that looks like an arrow pointing to the right or do you see A, D, A, D, and F# in first position? If you see the former (the constellation), this book may provide a framework to link together your 'constellations'. If nothing else, it can help you get out of the movable E and A form rut. I still work from this book a couple times a week and the word 'work' is probably worthy of note. The book can unlock the door but can't make the journey for you. For the price you can hardly go wrong if you are, at least an advanced beginner or intermediate player. It's worth it to have the light bulb go on and think, "gee, this is a logical ergonomic design", but don't expect to necessarily make an immediate quantum leap in your playing. I'm not sure this would be a good beginning book unless you have an instructor to help you apply the method. You should be able to play barre chords and note that some of the ones in the CAGED sequence require a pretty good finger stretch, especially the movable G form.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent learning tool
Review: It all finally makes sense!! I have 15 other books that have frustrated me to death, but Fretboard Logic starts with the bare bones and builds a conhesive and "logical" understanding of how and why. This book should included when you buy a guitar. I knew a lot of the pieces (fragmented), but this book explains the way it all fits together and gives a road map that unlocks the fretboard. I could not recommend a book more. Five stars is not enough.
Rating:
Summary: No nonsense!
Review: Just a quick note. I have been playing the guitar 15 odd years on a casual level and was getting frustrated that no bigger picture was coming to me about where what notes were and so forth. I was consistently scared of any fret higher than the 5th and when I tried to practice scales in an attempt to get to play more advanced stuff I always gave it up. The task just seemed too big. The result was that I never really practiced as such, I just played what I knew. I have owned Mr. Edwards' book for a little over a year now and my life has changed. I now practice every day and have a renewed interest in the instrument which I have come to realize is really very logical after all. I can actually play a solo now, something that was unthinkable before! I had bought a number of books before that but either they were too simple or boring or I didn't have the basics down so I couldn't benefit from them. That, too, has changed. If the description above fits you and especially if the CAGED system is foreign to you then give it a try and, if you can, cancel all appointments a week ahead. You'll be glad you did! Peace, Casper
Rating:
Summary: A must-own for every guitarist
Review: Learning guitar is an odd process. You're supposed to practice, practice, practice. You learn chord shapes. You have lessons. You dissect solos note by note. There appears to be no master plan. Somehow, through a variety of methods, you're supposed to learn. Eventually, you're assured, by some means you're not aware of yet (osmosis?), you'll "get it." This book is the "it" you're supposed to get. Far too many books assume that the common methods work. Many an aspiring student has put the guitar in the closet in frustration at something that doesn't address the basic question - What note do I play next? Bill Edwards has taken the idea of positional relationships to its highest point. If I play a C chord with a barre at the eighth fret, where will I find a convenient F and G position? What shape will I need to play, and what fret should I start from? This seems to me to be a basic question yet it hardly gets a mention in most books. It seems that if you practice long enough and don't get bored to death, you'll know this. Bill Edwards shows that the five major chord shapes (C, A, G, E, and D) follow as you move up the fretboard, so you quickly learn that if you're playing a certain shape at a certain fret, the chords you're going to need will be in a specific other shape a specific number of frets away. This is independent of what key you're playing in, so if you start a 12-bar blues with a A-shape, you can drop down a couple of frets and play an E-shape for the next chord. I've made it sound far more complex than it is. You'll need the book - make no mistake - and in just a few hours you'll have learned a huge amount of useful stuff. But this is just the first seventeen of over a hundred pages. The idea of positional relationships is used to describe scales and then the pentatonic blues scale, so you can build solos and know immediately where the next notes are. Fretboard Logic pulls all the useful stuff from other learning methods together. It shows you *why* you play the notes you do. I was suspicious of the other reviews here (mainly reprinted from the book's cover), because they sounded so good they couldn't be true. Then I saw the book recommended on the Fender Forum, so I decided to take a chance. Yeah, you still have to practice. Your fingers won't get supple until you do. But imagine practicing where you're constantly trying something new, and where the musical inspiration flows. That's what you'll get if you study Fretboard Logic.
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Summary: Get This Great Book - Disregard the Detractors
Review: Let me start off by saying that this book is unique, and because of that, it will probably always have detractors. I am writing to advise you not to pay any attention to them. There are thousands of books out there which teach guitar as if it is no different from a piano and I've bought an awful lot of them and wasted a lot of time. The nay sayers seem to be attacking it in part because it gets rave reviews from readers. They seem to want to elevate themselves by putting down others, which is sad, but all too common. If I could, I'd ask them to produce credentials first, and then I'd ask how much effort they actually put into it. I'm pretty sure they are not household names in the field of guitar. A good example is the guy who felt slighted because Fretboard Logic didn't make him "master his guitar." Heh. That's funny and sad at the same time. To me that sounds like some kind of cart and horse situation where the horse is sitting back on his haunches waiting for a ride from the cart. Let ME be clear - Fretboard Logic is the first book I have read which treats this unique instrument with the respect and detailed analysis it deserves. I am eternally grateful to the guy for taking the time and effort to put it together for the people like me who always wondered if there wasn't something missing from what my own teachers were teaching. After reading the Special Edition, I bought the entire series including the videos, and I'm glad I did. I will admit to having had to reread certain things a few times before it sunk in, but I usually have to do that anyway with any new stuff I'm learning - like with my pilots license, for example. And a lot of those books weren't even as well-written as Fretboard Logic. Some of these Amazon flamers apparently don't understand what they are reading very well. One guy asks "How long can you fake being a musician without reading music?" Disregarding the tortured grammar, the implication is that Fretboard Logic is "anti-reading" or something. I guess maybe his copy was missing the introductions in the back, including "Introduction to Music Theory" where the author introduces various notation formats including -you guessed it - standard music notation which is continued in the next book. But aside from gross misrepresentation, there is an even more important issue at stake here, and that relates to personal choice. If I understand him correctly, Mr. Edwards is trying to let each player decide for themselves the direction in which to take their musical efforts after the basics are covered. Here is an example: say you want to learn to improvise blues - just to jam away to your hearts content and make it up as you go along. What does that have to do with reading music? Answer: NOTHING. Reading something previously written isn't relevant when you are improvising. Same goes for things like, say, using a pick. If you are studying classical music, it isn't likely that you will have much use for a flat pick - but you probably would if you chose to study bluegrass. Each player's choices create a range of relevant subject matter. To my knowledge Fretboard Logic is the only series to even attempt to give the student so much freedom of choice. Only when I got to the third book did I start to fully understand why he put things in the order he did. It's all about building on solid foundations and allowing us to make our own choices about what we want to play. In book III I found some of the material very useful, but frankly, some of it didn't pertain to me. Since the chapters on notation - including tab - were so helpful to me personally, it is ironic that the guy is getting slammed for not having it in the first two sections. The people criticizing Logic apparently have a form of tunnel vision and can only see things in terms of their own narrow field of experience. Bottom line - the author is trying to get us away from what he calls the "put this finger here, that finger there," type of thinking. Why? Because it creates a rote mindset that stifles creative thinking and keeps people stuck in the beginner stages of playing. (I'm just glad I don't have to have to carry around a giant chord book with me anymore.) To the guys who can only think in terms of one dot/note/finger at a time I would just remind them that when you arrange those dot/notes/fingers on the page into tonal groupings and meaningful wholes - what do you start to see on the fretboard? PATTERNS. It just takes a lot longer the old way. The problem these people are having with Fretboard Logic is not because of the material or the organization - it is too clearly written and illustrated. Some people just don't engage in things that are not terribly easy, and playing guitar is not an easy endeavor. Also, I suspect it has to do with something the author mentions in the end of the first book: resistance to learning. Bill says - I'm paraphrasing - that learning new things is somewhat akin to "breaking eggs to make an omelet" and that there will always be a natural resistance to changing the status quo in our brains. I guess the smart people out there who do learn new things easily get used to this, and those who don't, prefer not having new ideas disrupt their intellectual comfort zones. Since Fretboard Logic is so different, I guess it will always have its detractors. Not me. I wish I'd ignored them in the first place. I'd have bought it sooner and saved a lot of time and money. THANK YOU BILL EDWARDS.
Rating:
Summary: Learn to 'see' the guitar the way it's played
Review: Most music is taught from a piano mentality... a long string of notes stretching from too low to sing to too high to sing. Edwards maps out music on the guitar the way notes are found on it, by strings, shapes, and relationships. His method allows you to move from tons of rote memorization to knowing a few things which apply to the whole fretboard. You'll learn the elementary chord shapes which will allow you to play any major chord in at least five different voicings. You'll be able to take what you already know and translate it into what you need. (How do you play an E flat minor?). You'll also learn the five pentatonic scale shapes and to see the relationship between them. In the second half of the book, he takes the fundamentals and translates them into making music in various styles.
Rating: 
Summary: So-so
Review: Not a bad guide to the underlying logic of the guitar fretboard. Very thorough, too. But if you want an easier, more concise, and practical guide (that I use as a performing musician and guitar instructor) that shows more concrete examples, try Fred Sokolow's Guitar Fretboard Road Maps. Edward's book is more useful for the intermediate guitarist (and beyond) who wants to deepen his understanding of the instrument (it won't improve your playing - Sokolow's will).
Rating:
Summary: Too much knowledge is assumed
Review: Perhaps I just don't have the mental faculties for this book, but I am now looking for a very elementary music theory book so that one day Fret Logic might make sense. The author tells the reader not to go to part 2 until part 1 is mastered, which means I will probably never make it to part 2. I feel like I need a lot more knowlege for this book to make much sense.
Rating:
Summary: It does what it's supposed to do...
Review: The book lays out a framework for understanding why the guitar is tuned the way it is, how chords can be found anywhere along the fretboard, and how to identify scales anywhere along the fretboard. It is appropriate for somebody with some experience with the instrument (barre chords are a must). If you are a rank beginner, this is not a good starting point. But, if you want to move beyond first position chords, if you want to understand the fretboard, and if you want to understand scales and why they are important, then this book is great. I use it as a stepping stone to more advanced tunes which require a deeper understanding of the fretboard. Think of this book as "Guitar Theory 101".
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