The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook
by The Beatles
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Book Reviews of The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook
Book Review: Rikky Rooksby, here to save the day
Summary: 5 Stars
Actually paying for music seems quaint in the 21st, when you can dial up anything you want on the 'net, from "Cry Me a River" to the East German national anthem. This is as true for sheet music and guitar tabs as it is for the actual songs. The problem with the homemade chords and tabs that you find online, however, is that they're often written by a bunch of schmoes who get things wrong. And worse, these bad tabs spread like a virus across the web: once a tab has been linked to enough times, you can't get rid of the thing, and it crowds out any future tabs that seek to correct it.
And so, tired of learning songs from campfire hacks and 14-year-olds in Oslo, I shelled out the dough for this book. The songs are all in the right keys and are, as far as I can tell, uniformly correct. I haven't found a duff chord in the book. As others have said, learning to play the Beatles music gives one a new appreciation for them as composers. Each was a hyper-fluent musician for whom exactness won out over approximation, and that exactness is well served by this dogged piece of work.
My only complaints about this book have to do with its design. Whoever laid it out was apparently a bit alphabet-challenged. You'll find "Long Long Long" between "It's All Too Much" and "It's Only Love." "Golden Slumbers" is stuck between "Dig It" and "Do You Want to Know a Secret." Looking for "Old Brown Shoe"? Just go to the M's. And so on. While the front cover design is lovely, the back cover features a horrible snapshot from '67 that has not even been corrected for red-eye, and the layout of the front matter and appendices looks like it was farmed out to a high school yearbook committee. (The book also has a habit of snapping shut while you're playing from it. Exasperated axe-men may have to resort to a chip clip to keep the damn thing open.)
The author of this otherwise fine set of transcriptions is listed as one Rikky Rooksby. A search for Mr. Rooksby only turns up other guitar books--the man himself remains elusive. Obviously Rikky Rooksby is the front name for a secret guitar society, possibly hiding out in the mountains of the Near Middle East.
Book Review: RULLY, RULLY GREAT BOOK!!!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
So you want to purchase a really good Beatles Book. You'll find mostly rave reviews here. And a few not so rave. The complaints about the binding are numerous. And, as reviewers have stated - two choices - Get the binding removed and spiral bound or break the spine and use the clips on your manuscript stand.
Don't listen to the people who felt let down about it being just a chord book. They didn't get that message when they read the title. 'nuff said.
Don't listen to the people who say some songs aren't in the right key. They all are. If you find what you're playing doesn't match what your hearing from a Beatles CD, have another look at the page. JUST BELOW THE CHORD DIAGRAMS MIGHT BE A CAPO INSTRUCTION. So, for instance, take "Norwegian Wood". Its in E, but you're going to put the capo on the second fret and play a D shape chord (just like the instruction says - which sounds like an E because of the capo placement. And so on. Now, there might not be a capo instruction, but there might be an instruction (same place) telling you to tune down one semitone (one fret). If you check out the "Look inside" facility on the image of the book cover and keep flicking until you get to "Across the Universe", then you'll see just that - an instruction telling you to tune down one semitone (if you wish to use those chord shapes). If you don't want to go there, you can always go to bar chords, but remember, you gotta play a Db instead of a D, and so on.
Yes, there's a cuppla songs that aren't in alpabetical order. Big Whoop!!! I tend to use the TABLE OF CONTENTS at the front of the book.
Its just one Beatles guitar book I own but its the most referred to. Buy it. Enjoy it. For life. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!!!
Book Review: FANTASTIC! The chords are incredibly accurate, and the format is terrific
Summary: 5 Stars
Look, I'm as cheap as the next guy, and so for a while I attempted to download guitar chords for Beatles songs from the net. But while some of the stuff I downloaded was OK, none of it was as good as the stuff in this book. The chords in this book are incredibly accurate--if they aren't the exact chords the Beatles played, they definitely SOUND like the chords they played--and in the proper keys.
The authors also provide chord diagrams for every chord in every song at the top of the song, and these show cases where an unconvention fingering is required, or where something other than the open chord is used (e.g. if one A is the standard open A, and the second is the 5th fret one, that is clearly noted). That's an incredible help, since so often chord music just tells you the name of the chord and leaves it to you to determine which version of that chord to play.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone looking to strum Beatles songs on their guitars. It's the best guitar chord book I've ever seen for ANY group, period.
On top of that, it's a bargain.
The only downside of this book is that it's a bit hard to keep the book open to the page you want, since the pages aren't huge and the binding it tight. But given how good this book is, I can live with that.
5 stars out of 5, and no reservations (other than the quibble about keeping the book open).
(I wish they'd come out with another volume covering the Beatles' solo output!)
Book Review: Nice book. Editors can't alphabetize.
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is a great start for learning the Beatles. The 192 included songs are listed mostly alphabetically by name with the keys of each chord and "chord symbol" boxes for each song. For the most part the chording is simplified for the intermediate guitarist, but very close to the sound on the albums. Many songs require a capo to be in-tune with the album. While some people don't like to use the capo, this book does make it possible to play most of the Beatles songs without having to re-tune your guitar. I found the book overall really easy to use, and the small size makes it practical to bring on trips.
One of the drawbacks is that this book lacks of any rhythm notation, licks, or other musical notation. Since most of the Beatles' songs have unusual rhythm parts, you will probably need to search for the songs on YouTube in order to figure them out. It would have been super if they had thought to include the main guitar riffs in tab notation, but they didn't.
Another drawback is the sloppy order of the songs in the book. It would have been much better to have grouped the songs by album, or to have them ALL alphabetically ordered. Instead, 95% of the songs are in alphabetical order with the other 5% seemingly randomly placed. Despite this mess, I still recommend the book.
Book Review: Dear Amazon, wont you come out and play?
Summary: 5 Stars
This is far and away the most useful chord songbook for the intermediate acoustic guitarist. Like other reviewers, I have worn out the spine of my copy, and may need to purchase a new copy. I've also annotated notes against songs.
Why is this Beatles songbook book so useful?
1) If you know Beatles Songs, you can start playing many immediately (some are just 2-3 chords)
2) If you want your friends to sing-a-long, this book is perfect
3) Special chord shapes are shown and diagrammed right when used in song! No more looking up what a A7sus2 chord is
I found playing Beatles songs as a break-through to singing while I played acoustic guitar, the reason being I already knew rhythm of song, so just had to learn chord changes and strum patterns.
Since I purchased this book a few years ago, I've sine noticed a number of other "songbooks" with just tabs come out, so clearly this format works (as it does searching tabs on the internet). The only thing missing from this book is strumming patterns, but I've kept rating at 5 stars since frankly, guitar books I've purchased with strumming patterns are usually wrong/too simple. I hope someday soon all guitar tabs will include strumming patterns.