🎸 Book Review: Guitar Hacks: Triads and Inversions by Graham Tippett (Kindle Edition)
A compact, practical guide for guitarists looking to master triads and their inversions across the fretboard—Tippett’s method offers a fast-track to fretboard fluency and creative freedom.
🧠 Overview
Published in March 2017, Guitar Hacks: Triads and Inversions is a 21-page Kindle guide by Graham Tippett, a musician and educator known for his minimalist, results-driven approach to guitar instruction. This book focuses on helping guitarists internalize triads—three-note chord shapes—and their root, first, and second inversions across the neck.
Tippett’s goal is to simplify what many find tedious: memorizing and applying triads in real musical contexts. His method is designed to reduce rote learning and instead build intuitive fretboard awareness.
🎯 Key Concepts Covered
- 🎵 Triad types: Major, minor, diminished, augmented, sus2, and sus4
- 🧭 Inversions explained: Root position, first inversion, and second inversion—mapped across the fretboard
- 🎸 Application-focused: Emphasis on using triads for rhythm parts, chord progressions, and melodic soloing
- 🧠 Learning shortcuts: Tippett introduces a visual and positional system to accelerate mastery
“If you know your triads inside-out on the neck, you’ve laid the foundations for mapping out the fretboard when creating chord progressions, rhythm parts or improvising melodically.” — Graham Tippett
💬 Reader Reception
- ⭐ Goodreads rating: 3.81/5 from 36 ratings
- 📖 Readers appreciate the book’s clarity, brevity, and practical focus
- 🧾 Some note that it’s best suited for intermediate players who already understand basic chord theory
- 💬 “A great tool for visualizing the fretboard and breaking out of scale-based soloing.” — Goodreads reviewer
⚠️ Considerations
- 📄 Short format: At 21 pages, it’s a focused guide—not a comprehensive textbook
- 🎓 Requires foundational knowledge: Beginners may need supplemental resources on basic chord theory
- 🧾 No audio or video support: The book relies on diagrams and written explanations
🏁 Final Verdict
Guitar Hacks: Triads and Inversions is a streamlined, effective resource for guitarists who want to deepen their fretboard knowledge and unlock new creative possibilities. Graham Tippett’s method is ideal for players who prefer a hands-on, visual approach to learning and want to move beyond scales into more harmonically rich territory.
