This brings to mind a pet peeve I have about watching great guitarists on television. Have you ever noticed that 9 times out of ten the bloody camera is pointed at the WRONG BLOODY HAND? It drives me absolutely bugshit. Here you've got Clapton or somebody playing a beautiful acoustic country blues and you're dying to find "that chord" that you can't quite figure out, and the camera is fixed on his right hand. Absolutely incredible.

In terms of learning the chords, I think watching is especially great for the jazz and blues tunes so you can watch how a great player chooses the voicings that'll offer the right bass notes as well as the chords themselves. I guess this is as true with folk, come to think about it. When you start learning jazz, you find yourself jumping up and down the neck alot until you see a voicing much closer to the preceeding chord, and much more pleasing to boot.

I've got this friend who's amazing at the chord thing. But this guy is walking proof of why theory is ultimately so important to improve your chord knowledge. You ask this guy "Hey where do I find a cm7#5?", and his theory is so down, he goes, "Well lets see; if you play this chord shape and just drop this note and put your finger here, that'll work. OR you can go with this other shape over here..." and on and on. What he showed me was how there are all these recognizable shapes, but all the chords have structure, and if you get your theory down, then you begin to realize that there is a logic to all these wierd sounding chords. You eventually get to the place where you can figure out chords based on that theory.

So, yeah watching is great, especially for voicings and general inspiration, but sooner or later, depending on the kind of music you want to play I suppose, you're going to have to look at theory to help you make sense of the whole mess. SB