Customer Reviews

The Complete Encyclopedia of the Guitar: A Definitive Guide to the World's Most Popular Instrument

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Alright, settle down. This is a very good book with an unfortunate title. A literal "definitive" guitar book would need to be shipped via freight. Someday the likes of Eddie Van Halen, Hanson, and CC Deville will make it into the same book as Segovia and Charlie Christian. In the meantime, this is a great book to initiate the young guitarist to how the guitar has evolved over many years...more than your eighteen.

The guitar is just an instrument to some, but to the people who make it a vocation it's so much more. This book is a detailed timeline of the events that made the guitar what it is today. Along the way hearing about the stories and events that the guitarist faced while playing their instrument. Learn about early classical guitars, before they used electric. The guitar itself doesn't always create all the sounds you hear, so learn about things like reverb, echo, distortion, and different pedels revolutionized guitar playing forever.

This is one of the many books about guitar players which fails to mention Genesis alums Anthony Phillips & Steve Hackett, which is, frankly, APPALLING! 1]Mr. Burrows mentions quite a few times the revolutionary "finger tapping" guitar technique but seems unaware that Steve Hackett is the earliest known practitioner of this technique! Steve isn't even mentioned in the book, yet Kurt Cobain gets an entry!Cobain seems to have barely been able to TUNE his instrument!

2]What makes this especially criminal is that Hackett & Phillips are two of the only contemporary composers for the guitar making any serious contribution to the repertoire!As brilliant as Frank Zappa & Steve Vai's compositions and improvisations are, their pieces are simply not viable [no pun intended] as performance works. Yet compositions such as Phillips's "Tregenna Afternoons" & Hackett's Symphony "A Midsummer Night's Dream" are MAJOR contributions to the existing six-string repertoire, and Burrows omits them in favor of...Kurt Cobain? Johnny Marr? Give me a break! When are these two great players/composers going to get their due from the orthodox media?

Oh my, time to repent..lol..Hey, this book contains a lot of information. Unfortunately, you forgot who Frank Zappa said reinvented electric guitar! Eddie Van Halen...Everyone from Steve Vai to Jeff Beck to Jimmy Page to Eric Clapton to Pete Townshend and many more call Eddie the INNOVATOR, and the man that started the new revolution..Again, the great Frank Zappa said Eddie reinvented electric guitar! He has been called the most influential and innovative guitarist since Hendrix..I know Steve Vai and Satriani are PHENOMENAL, but you have made a grave error..Eddie was the first..After 1978, the rules of rock music, as well as rock guitar, CHANGED FOREVER...Not bad for a guy who never had a guitar lesson and BUILT his own guitar from second hand parts and painted it with Schwinn bicycle paint..lol..And hey, where was Rhandy Rhoades too? damn..