The Ultimate Tool for All Musicians - The Chord Wheel

As a person that has a excellent education but never seems to remember what I want to, this is a great chord wheel. I can concentrate on experience sound and structure instead of trying to remember everything with the turn of a wheel and a good understanding of how to use it. Has directions and is great for what cords to play when you choose a key. Also will help you in the proper ear for writing songs. Simple easy to use with basic knowledge.

Really useful for understanding and creating new chord progressions. A great reference to have as a songwriter. It includes a clear concise explaination of basic chord progression theory as well, which I found very useful.

I recently bought this book having been told about it by a young man who works at a local computer store that also sells musical instruments - a big chain store - Anyway, this young man recently graduated from a music school at a university also here.

Jim Fleser is to be congratulated on this excellent tool. It greatly simplifies a lot of music theory and puts the information directly into your hands for composition and other considerations like transposition and so much more. It distills the important stuff down to something graspable even for amateurs like me.

I gave copies of the book to my two nephews who are studying music now and I'm told their instructors agreed with me when I said, I wish I'd had this book 30 years ago. Better late than never I say. And kudos to the publisher, Hal Leonard for making this available to the likes of me and others! In my opinion this "book" is essential to every musician's library!

5 Stars

Basically a circle of fifths on steroids. I think the concept is great as far as a visual learning tool in exploring chord progressions, and chord relationships. For most of the rest of the "Features" this does, I think there are much easier ways of doing these things. For example: you can do chord construction with it but it is rather complex, slow, and clunky ( a simple step chart is much easier). Also as noted in other reviews the documentation is sparse, lacking, and suspect. I think that most of the 3 star and below reviewers will do a better job of explaining than I can, just be aware that it may not be exactly what it says it is.

UPDATE!!!
I just received a The Guitar Wheel and I think it is much better for advanced use though I think this wheel might be better for beginners.

A very helpful tool when writing songs, or just learning the chords. I use it a lot for both and it really helps you understand everything from a visual standpoint. A very valuable tool to have to learn from and to refer back to.

This tool has helped me immensely with my songwriting! The explanation inside the book is GREAT for new guitarists to help gain an understanding of song structure and how keys come together. Ya gotta learn the rules before you learn to break them!!!

Though this is not perfect, it is useful. Yes, if you know theory well enough, you can figure most of this out in your head. However, if your a novice or just need a reminder, this is great. No, it doesn't completely describe theory or cover every possible option but I don't think it was intended to. The instructions inside are brief but there is a website to back it up. I find this thing very useful.

I have always played piano by the chord theory. This handy tool is helpful in figuring out chords to a song. That's mainly why I bought it. Just turn the dial according to how many sharps or flats are in your sheet music to find the key, and it lines up all the chords that would be possible in that piece of music. Plus you can transpose keys easily too.

A most useful tool in transposing, especially in picking guitar chords for old hymns. It is limited to just basic chords, so you will need suplemmental chord charts to see how the less common chords are played.

Cool and resourceful book to have around when you're searching for that "special" chord that fits within your key, or even when looking for an "accidental" to create tension when composing. The wheel on the cover is such a cool device and makes transposing a breeze, and also serves to help create interesting key changes.

I'm a beginning piano student, studying with a Simply Music teacher. This is a piano method that emphasizes chord structure, improvisation and arranging. I had years of instrumental music training and music theory coursework, but I never really caught on to chord structure, because I was just reading notes and playing classical pieces. It's been very hard for me to let go of note reading, but this chord wheel and the accompanying book have really helped me visualize note and chord relationships. I'm no composer, but now I can take a right-hand melody from a Simply Music book and create a left hand accompaniment using what I'm learning about chords. It's a start!

This is a very handy tool for beginner and advanced musician, very educational.I'm finding it very helpful with my music I am 86 Yrs old and still learning .I have found the Chord Wheel most helpful.I also bought my granddaughter a Chord Wheel as she is just starting to learn to read music
and it will be a benefit to her .

I play the Uke, among other instruments, and I wanted a quick way to find the chord set in a given key without all the work in figuring it out. This little device/booklet does exactly that. It's been saving me time!

I have skimmed the written material inside and carefully read parts of it, and it looks like it can be very helpful to us "novices." What I was mostly interested in, however, was the wheel, which has been useful to me time and again. And when I have questions about aspects of the wheel, the written material fleshes out what is on the wheel. Nice. The inside material is clearly written and doesn't assume the reader has a musical degree from a university!

If you play a musical instrument and you struggle with chords, this is a good tool. Is it better than others on the market? I don't know. But it is definitely one good tool out there and at a good price!

Great for a beginning musician or someone that's playing playing a while and just wants handy reference to freshen up. The limited content within is an oddly arrange smattering of basic theory ideas. Nevertheless, I recommend this reference.

This is a very useful little tool, for figuring out your progressions, it even let's you experiment with those extended jazz chords; you can use this tool as a guide, of course, but if you want to get a little adventurous, you can do that, too. It will keep you close to theory.

Very handy tool for learning your major scales. Pick a strum pattern you like and play I VI IV and V in any major key and you can compose a pretty good sounding song. I keep it on my music stand along with my cord chart and guitar wheel from Music Master Publishing. Really spice things up with the guitar wheel to select even more good sounding triads, bar cords and inversion that will make your music in that Key Signature sound so much more interesting.

Yes, yes, you could construct one of these yourself, and would probably learn a whole lot in the process. However, this one is well made, sturdy, and readable. It has actually helped me to remember the chord families of the less often used key signatures.

I am brushing up on my guitar skills and purchased " The Chord Wheel" and it saved me a lot of studying to re master the scales and ease my writing inspirations. The " Chord Wheel" was everything I could ask for and I am very happy with the store's great delivery service. Also the ability to purchase items with some great pricing options.