With a Fretboard Toolbox Original Mandolin Edition, you get 18 spiral-bound pages that help you answer questions like these, and apply it to any key:

• How do you tune a mandolin, and what are the notes up and down a mandolin fretboard?

• How do I know which chords sound good together?

• Why do certain chords sound better together than others?

• What are some cool chord progressions that I can play in any key?

• How do I build those chords?

• What's the difference between Major and minor chords?

• What are 7 chords, and how do you play them?

• How do I build more complicated (flavorful) chords?
  

• What are pentatonic scales, and how can they improve my soloing?

Answer these questions and more with a Fretboard Toolbox!

• Check out the INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS on YouTube!

• Click here to download the Table of Contents, Instructions, and the G Major/E minor page from this book for FREE, to see for yourself what you can do with a Fretboard Toolbox!

See what others are saying about the Original Mandolin Edition:

Check out this Fretboard Toolbox Original Mandolin Edition review from Ted Eschliman at JazzMando!

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 "The Fretboard Toolbox Mandolin Edition is a great visual reference, and way to learn theory, chord building, and soloing in a useful book format.  It's helpful for beginners learning the basics, all the way up to advanced players wanted to learn to create advanced chord voicings.  This is something that I am looking to turn my mandolin students onto, because I can see how it will help them advance more quickly by being able to visualize how theory applies to their fretboard in all the most commonly played keys."

Joe Pickett- Over 20 years of experience playing mandolin in bands, two-time Kansas Fiddling and Picking youth award winner, 1999 Kansas Fiddling and Picking mandolin champion, and 2000 RockyGrass mandolin winner.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hey Scott,

Thanks for sending the Mando book.  I checked out some of your videos as well.  That is a nice system for teaching basic chord construction without getting bogged down in too much theory. There are many things you could add but then I think it would start getting more complicated and I think you are trying to avoid that.  If I were to add anything to it I would do a couple pages explaining voicings.  For instance the chords E, A, and D in open position are all voiced the same way.  E = 1, 5, 1, 3, 5, 1  A = 1, 5, 1, 3, 5 and D = 1, 5, 1, 3.  You can notice two things from this 1) as you move up in string sets, you are transposing by 4ths. 2) As you move the chord which ever note falls on the 2nd string needs to move up one fret to accommodate for the tuning of the guitar.  Like wise the chords G and C are voiced the same way in open position G = 1, 3, 5, 1, 3, 5  C = 1, 3, 5, 1, 3.  When you look at the two different open voicings of major chords you can see that open voiced chords travel up the neck (toward the guitar body) and close voiced chords travel down the guitar neck toward the tuning keys.  Once you understand the voicings it is easy to do the math and raise or lower notes to get what you are after.  It is also easy to determine what chord voicings you would like to choose to get the sound you are after, i.e. in the case of an add 9 chord do you want it tightly voiced so that it has some tension between the root and 2nd or do you want it nice and open sounding like message in a bottle?  It is also worth noting that chord voicings stay the same as you move them up or down the neck by half step.

Good luck with the books, I think it is a good product.

Jason
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hi Scott,

 

Thanks for the email.  Small world, I grew up in BV and my parents are still there as well.

 

I've heard nothing but great stuff about your book.  I'm just learning to play and thought it would be a great tool to have in the box.  I look forward to learning from it.

 

Best,

Jim
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hello Scott,

Thank you, it is helping; even for an old dog. Who said we can't learn new tricks.

Jeff
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Scott-

This is a great option to have as part of my "toolbox". Thanks for providing this to your existing customers gratis.

Keith

P.S. So when do you release the iPhone app? :-)
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
I recently bought the old form of the Fretboard Toolbox, and I use it as a reference. I tend to keep it open when I'm playing from sheet music, as I am trying to learn my scales better, and build intuition on which doublestops I can use, etc.

I like the new version. The biggest change is the loss of the fretboard layout chart, which is fine - it's repeated on every page, and the pentatonic layout has at least every other note if you need to figure it out. That seems like an good tradeoff for the chord progressions chart. I like the addition of the minor key chord numbers in addition to the major key, along with the the chord progressions, that is a good addition.

db
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thanks Scott! It's great to have the Toolboxes in my music laptop. I also appreciate the continuing customer service.

 R/
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Scott,

I see. Thanks! My mandolin teacher was trying to show me that the I, IV, and V chords of any key are composed of only seven notes. It looks like you've expanded that to show that the IIm, IIIm, etc are composed of those same notes. It makes more sense to me now.


Thanks Again!

Randy Bradley