The Art of The Chart

The Art Of The Chart by Russell Fragar, is a great spiral-bound book that has been written to enable any musician to read and write chord charts – a must for all musicians. The focus is on keeping it simple yet complete.

The book begins with very simple charts which take the mystery of reading and writing music away forever. It then moves on to describe the most useful and commonly used features of good charts so you will never be caught out or embarrassed at a rehearsal again.

It also includes a section on how to write your own charts. The emphasis is on making them easy to read, so that the musician’s mind can be on playing creatively not on deciphering some ancient-looking hieroglyphics!

This book has been very helpful for me in the way it instructs you as to exactly what to do when you get to a certain problem in writing music. There is simple theory here and there, so you do need to know the basics of theory to get a full understanding of the book. There are a lot of easy to follow diagrams along the way, so you can’t get lost. There’s a great section at the end of the book that gives varies charts and tables. For example, the “table of common chords” gives you a large list of most chords in any given key (for example the key of C has Cm, Cm7 etc.) and also tells you which notes are in each chord. One section I found very handy was the “list of key signatures” (self explanatory really).

The author actually uses handwritten examples (the music is handwritten as well, as you’ll see in the sample at the back of the book) to SHOW that it is all easily understandable. He also provides a few, full page, 10 lined piano scores for you to write on and experiment with.

If you are an active musician who would either love the idea of creating their own chord charts or want to UPDATE your own to improve them, then this book is for you! It is basically an instruction manual for reading and writing chord charts. I personally had started writing my own chord charts for my church and when I read through this book I was able to change them to make them easier to read and follow! I recommend it for any musician!!

To purchase or just to have a look at the Art Of The Chart just click on the link below then once the page has loaded, click on the link “Music” (which is next to “Darlene Zschech”) and you’ll find The Art Of The Chart.

There you can get the latest products FROM all of Hillsongs’ music and book resources.

The author, Russell Fragar, was the music pastor for Hills Christian Life Centre, Sydney Australia (www.hillsong.com) until he moved to America to help pastor another church. He was the Music Director and co-producer of their live worship albums and has written many well known contemporary songs. Russell has been the music director on many live productions and recordings, FROM where he draws his enormous wealth of experience.

This is a great book – You will find it useful and very handy in future, just as I have been able to write my own chord charts I hope this book will help you and make you a well known musician and writer of music.