Customer Reviews

The Acoustic Guitar Method, Complete Edition Book/CD (String Letter Publishing) (Acoustic Guitar) (Acoustic Guitar (String Letter))

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love this book and 3-CD set, but everyone learns their own way. What worked for me in this approach was the following: Mr. Hamburger includes a great amount of discussion with each lesson, belaboring how to transition from, say, a particular D chord fingering to a G chord, spelling out which finger to move when and where. There are small but clear photographs showing the appropriate finger position for chords and strumming positions. He anticipates the kinds of problems that you are likely to have, and offers clear suggestions on how to overcome them. He structures the lessons in a way that they build logically on each other. When he illustrates the music on the CD, he plays exactly what is in the lesson -- no embellishments to show his stuff, just clear examples of what you should be playing. He plays each tune at the right speed, and then replays the tune at the slow speed that he expects the student to begin with. It is easy to play along with Mr. Hamburger as you learn. The full course introduces all the usual topics for acoustic guitar, including basic strumming, introductory finger picking and flat picking, pull-offs, hammer-ons, etc. The coverage is not in-depth enough to make you a master, but it is detailed enough to get you a first-year level of understanding by the time you complete the third book.
The music used throughout is traditional American music, "folk," if you will. If you are anxious to start your own garage rock band, this may not be the music of choice for you. If you do choose to learn guitar playing from this, you should supplement the text with some music theory....
I cannot think of anything in the lesson book that I thought was inappropriate. You aren't likely to find everything you would ever want to know about guitar in one place. But if you do, this book will be "volume one" of that library.

I recommend this book for anyone who is picking up a guitar for the first time, but already has some basic knowledge of music notation. It gets you up to speed right away playing simple roots and folk songs, and emphasizes beginner drills, such as switching back and forth between two chords over and over until you can do it smoothly.

This book might also be nice for a beginner who has some guitar experience and is looking for a colletion of folk-style songs to learn and practice

Hamburger does a good job of pacing things for beginners. Enough songs to keep you interested & focused on mastering basic skills, but not so much that you get overwhelmed. A good instroduction to the basic elements that define various folk styles. Also, as another reviewer points out, there are many practice tracks on the CDs, at least one for each exercise leading up to the featured songs and including recordings of simple SLOW strumming of each chord as it's introduced. This might seem like overkill to some, but for anyone who's new to learning to play an instrument, the first great lesson to learn is PRACTICE SLOWLY. Hamburger demonstrates this principle well! Also, playing along with the tracks helps develop solid timing and it's a little more interesting than strumming along to your metronome. If the flatpicking version of Sally Goodin is simple, well, that's because it's for BEGINNING players. Once I mastered Hamburger's simple arrangement, I was able to HEAR better when listening to other recordings of the tune and understand how fiddlers and guitarists and others have embellished and expanded it through improv over generations. It didn't take long before I started experimenting with adding to the arrangement myself--but you have to start at the bottom. He also does a good job of emphasizing the need to learn clear chord changes, something that's best learned a few chords at a time and that can save you a lot of frustration down the road if you focus on it from the start. I appreciate the emphasis on quality of sound in the early stages rather than on pages of chord diagrams.

The layout of the book itself is very clean and easy to read--something many other methods could improve on. My only "complaint" is the stiff binding--spiral would have been nice.

There's not much theory here, but I had theory from other sources before I started learning the guitar. I'm not sure how this method would look to someone who doesn't know music basics already. It's been so long since I had my first do-re-mi lesson that I can't quite picture the world without solfege anymore. As a general intro to folk guitar, this one's as good as the best I've seen.

David Hamburger has put together a wonderful beginning course for those that want to learn to play the acoustic guitar. I have the book and the DVD set. Each, on their own, is a VERY good resource. Together they are fantastic. Everything positive that is said about this course in the other reviews is absolutely true. Whether you read the book or watch the video, Hamburger comes off as someone who has thought about the best way to communicate to a new learner. The extras on essential listening and other information just make this superb instructional material that much better.

If you are thinking about buying this material don't hesitate. Get it today. You'll be glad that you did.

About a year ago I got a wild hair and decided to buy a guitar. I ended up getting a used Taylor Big Baby. First and only instrument I've really tried to learn how to play. Since I can't afford lessons, I got this book. I'm most of the way through it and am quite happy with the instruction I've received so far. I'm not sure that an intermediate guitarist would get a lot from this book that they couldn't get from better sources, but for a beginner I think it's great.

Unlike another book/CD combo I got, Hamburger has you immediately start playing songs. Very simple songs, granted, but songs nonetheless, which is very satisfying as a rank beginner who isn't sure they want to put the effort into really learning how to play guitar (and it does take A LOT of effort). He teaches how to play some really wonderful old folk songs, mostly American, but also at least one English. I've learned how to play quite a few of them so far, including two of my favorites, Scarborough Fair and House of the Rising Sun. I've also learned a bunch of chords and some strumming and finger-picking patterns, and how to read tablature (I'm afraid I skipped the notation reading part). Am I ready to go on the road? Hardly. But I feel like Hamburger has given me a solid foundation on which to build more advanced skills. I've even been able to jam (sort of) with a friend who's been playing for many years.

I would definitely have liked more strumming patterns. He shows you a couple, but I wish there were more. Learning different strumming patterns from my friend and from websites really added new life to the songs I learned from Hamburger's book. He might also have briefly shown more complex versions of some of the songs. He wouldn't have to break it down step by step like he does with the basic versions, but a taste of what is possible would have been nice. He does at least offer suggestions for albums to buy if you want to hear the professionals play the songs he teaches you---hearing Ralph Stanley sing Man of Constant Sorrow was definitely inspiring.

For a total beginner, I highly recommend this book. It's a lot of fun. I've not only learned how to play guitar, I've learned a lot about American folk music. I definitely plan on checking out his other books once I'm finished with this one.

This is an excellent resource for a beginning guitarist. I've been playing off and on for more than 25 years, but when my 11-year-old expressed an interest in playing guitar, I wasn't sure where to start (after teaching him "Wild Thing" of course). I needed a well structured, engaging instructional set that we could work through together. I headed to the library and a couple of book and music stores to page through everything they had. This was the only book/CD method that really fit the bill. It assumes no prior knowledge of the instrument, has clear, concise lessons that build naturally upon one another, uses real songs rather than just chords and scales and -- as an added bonus -- is based on the styles of music I generally play (blues & bluegrass), so it's pretty familiar territory.

It is working out wonderfully. My son likes the pace and the songs (mostly), I have a good roadmap for teaching him and we're having a great time going through it together.

This would not be a great method for a kid wanting to learn on his own or someone who wasn't into roots music. If you have any prior knowledge of the guitar, the pace is excruciatingly slow, but it is perfect for a total beginner. The only real downside is the binding. It's hard to keep the book open while reviewing the lessons. Spiral binding would have made the book much easier to use.

I've strummed my acoustic guitar since the heyday of the Kingston Trio, briefly taking lessons, and plowing through Lord knows how many "easy guitar method" books.
But only after I stumbled onto Hamburger's book did I really begin to play. His common sense explanations, practice exercises and recorded examples--played a tempo and then slow--have given me confidence. While his lessons are basic, the text is rooted in serious musicianship and musical theory, and does not insult my intelligence as an experienced choral singer.
I've learned more from Hamburger's book in a a few weeks than I had in
40 years.

This book is excellent for beginning to intermediate acoustic guitarists 10 yrs. old and up. It's not the be-all and end-all, but does the job quite nicely. I've been using it to teach 3rd to 10th grade students privately for about 2 years now. It is a little light on teaching how to read the treble clef, but the tab explanations are clear. It has very good examples on the CD's also, which should definitely be part of the learning process.

The book provides some basic first steps for someone beginning on the guitar. The biggest problem I had was with the enclosed CD which has been glued into the seam of the book and when I removed it the CD broke. I manged to retrieve some but not all of the files. I tried to get a new CD through Amazon and directly from David but received no reply to my e-mails. The book gives some basic strumming techniques and some introductory music. The pace of learning is quite slow.

Over the years I have used many home study books/courses for the Guitar. I rate this one very high. It is easy to read and follow. The CD is excellent. I have advanced much quicker with this course than any of the many others that I have used. I am not a beginner nor am I a professional. I enjoy finger style picking and this course is the best I have ever used. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to do some finger style picking.