Fretwise

Reference Library

Where to go after Fretwise

A short, opinionated list of the books, sites, and exercises that take you beyond this tutorial.

You’ve made it through every chapter. What now?

This is an unbiased, deliberately short list — only resources that actually advance a working guitarist’s musicianship.

Books

  • Ted Greene, Chord Chemistry. The bible of chord theory for guitar. Dense and life-long.
  • Mick Goodrick, The Advancing Guitarist. Re-orients you around single-string thinking and modal improvisation.
  • William Leavitt, A Modern Method for Guitar. The Berklee curriculum — rigorous reading + theory.
  • Mark Levine, The Jazz Theory Book. Not guitar-specific; the clearest theory book ever written about jazz harmony.

Ear-training apps

  • Functional Ear Trainer (Alain Benbassat method) — recognise notes by their scale-degree feel, not by raw pitch.
  • Tenuto (iOS) — clean, focused drills on intervals, chords, key signatures.

Lifetime exercises

These four habits, done a little every day, will out-pace any course on the market:

  1. Transcribe by ear. Pick a song and figure it out without tabs. Start with melodies, then chords, then solos.
  2. Sing what you play. If you can’t sing a phrase, you don’t really hear it. This single habit separates intermediates from advanced players.
  3. Learn a new song every week. Doesn’t have to be perfect. Volume beats polish at this stage.
  4. Play with humans. Find a jam, a band, a duo, an open mic. Theory is for serving music, and music exists between people.

Going deeper into harmony

When you’re ready to push past Fretwise’s harmony chapters, the next topics are:

  • Modal interchange and borrowed chords. Using chords from the parallel minor in a major key.
  • Secondary dominants. V-of-V, V-of-vi, etc. — adding tension to non-tonic chords.
  • Negative harmony. Inverting a progression around an axis to find its emotional opposite.
  • Reharmonisation. Re-imagining the chords under a melody you already know.

A final note

Theory is a service to your ear, not a replacement for it. The fastest improvement happens when you alternate days: one day reading a chapter, the next day playing — using only what you learned the day before.

Bookmark this page. Come back in six months. The list will still be true.

Good luck — and play more songs.