Customer Reviews

Basic Guitar: The New and Revised Edition (Guitar Player Basic Library)

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

 

 

I am a novice guitarist (electric) looking for books to help me develop basic skills and techniques. This book was *perfect*. Articles cover all the bases from reading tab to picking, chords, rhythm, lead and technique. Most of the articles are very clearly written and assume little or no prior knowledge. Outstanding for a beginning guitarist.

This book is very well illustrated and is densely packed with useful information on all the basic aspects of guitar. While it is a beginners book, it has enough information to teach one for a long time. The chapter headings are GETTING STARTED, READING MUSIC, CHORDS, PLAYING BACK UP, GUITAR TECHNIQUES, PLAYING LEAD, FINGERPICKING, FLATPICKING, and PLAYING THE BLUES. There is a section on stringing and tuning with two black and white photos. There are b+w photos through out the book to illustrate the points as well as handdrawings. Some of the sections seem to have been articles in a guitar magazine (like in "My tips for beginners" by Edward Van Halen). There is also a section on improvisation. Having said this, I wonder if a person could learn a guitar from this alone or whether anyone would still need at least a few live lessons from a skilled teacher. I suspect that you will still need some live lessons, but the book would be a worthwhile support and help to remember what is taught.

This book is an adequate introduction to various guitar techniques and theory, BUT this book will not provide you the necessary background to begin learning to play a guitar from scratch. Specifically, if you don't know guitar terminology, don't know the basic anatomy of a guitar, have never strung your own guitar, don't know the proper way to hold a guitar, and are unsure of basic hand posture (or have any of a number of other fundamental questions that may plague a neophyte), then this book is not the place to start.

This book is appropriate for a person who has played for a few months and is seeking to add more depth to their playing repertoire, but for those of us who still don't know our a*ses from our elbows this is not the place to start.