Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Playing Guitar (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Although this book is clearly intended for self-help I was interested to read it for possible use with my students. I am familiar with Noad's books, having used his SOLO GUITAR PLAYING with great success for a number of years; but I was curious to see what this latest book might have to offer that was new or different. A glance through immediately revealed two major differences from his SOLO book. First, the scope is much wider, with the inclusion of popular styles such as Blues and Flamenco. In addition I found extensive use of guitar tablature as well as standard notation. Students find tablature very easy, and this enables them to play more advanced pieces at an earlier stage. Some teachers regard this as a crutch, bur Noad clearly wants to get students into interesting music as soon as possible. I found the choice of music most appealing, including the famous Anonymous Romance which is credited with drawing more people to the guitar than other single piece. In summary, I plan to use this book with students who wish to experiment with various styles to find where their major interest lies. I find the text clear and interesting. The sidebars with cartoons and information on "Guitar Gods" etc. are a bit overcute for my taste, but are actually quite informative. In contrast the hand drawings by Linda Trujillo are some of the best and clearest that I have seen in any music instruction book. My only regret is that a CD was not included. Nowadays most self-instruction books seem to have these, and I feel that the publishers would be well advised to include this in a future edition. Overall, a fine addition to the teaching literature.

I have had a fantasy about playing the guitar since childhood, but only recently as an adult took the plunge. I wanted to do more than simple "picking and grinning" so I rejected quite a few beginners' books before I came across Frederick Noad's Complete Idiot's Guide to Playing the Guitar. From the title I was not expecting much depth but found myself drawn in by the clear explanations and step-by-step approach. I particularly enjoyed the Spanish pieces and am currently working on the first part of "Romance." Since all the selections have guitar tablature as well as music notes, it has made it easy for me to dive in and play enjoyable songs before having all the notes memorized. Admittedly, I jump ahead and try to play more advanced music than I am really ready for, but what the heck - I love this book! I'm really learning to play the guitar!

Not a bad book, but a bit frustrating for the complete beginner. I realize that writing a book for beginners is difficult, because you are taking many complex topics and trying to cover them in a few pages, but this book did not intially "click" for me.

However, two years after I bought this book, I have found this book to be good review material. I was a bit puzzled by the direction to grow fingernails out and begin playing finger picking. I found much greater success learning the basics with a pick first and fingers later on. The much quicker progress with a pick encouraged me during the difficult and frustrating first year.

My advice: Get a really good teacher for the early basics (I cannot overemphasize how important this was for me). Buy this book for cursory reference. Get Fretboard Logic (Bill Edwards) to get a really simple, straight forward set of building blocks. Buy a songbook of music that you really want to learn to play. Be persistent! I fumbled for the first 1 1/2 years and then at 2 years it finally started to click. It is well worth it!

Good luck.

I confess: I'm an idiot and I want to play the guitar. This book seemed like the perfect solution, but alas, it was not to be. I now understand the dilemma: how does an experienced player & teacher really capture what it is to be a stone cold "idiot" beginner? This book is loaded with helpful information and clear drawings, but I could only get so far without someone to listen to or watch what I was doing and tell me "Yes, you're doing that correctly." I agree with the reviewer who advised that you use this book in conjunction with lessons from a teacher. I start my lessons next month...

So I'm writing this a year after I got this book. I had never attempted to play anything on the guitar, and this book was the first of any guitar books that I have.

Its not perfect, but it was a great launch pad for what was ahead. There is a huge range of songs in here that provide even now, a fun challenge.

That being said, I'll be concise--pro's and cons'

Pro's:
It is wonderful to have a CD to play with.
There are huge amounts of varying level, and style, songs to try.
It is an EXCELLENT book, 5 stars, IF you can pick read around some of the seemingly overly difficult ideas for total beginners. Know when to skip pages!
Some really wonderful songs!

Con's:
When the mention of chords came in, 'oh my darlin', it said 'just do these'. It took *forever* to get those two chords comfortably moving to eachother. I tend not to continue in a book until I feel comfortable with what I've passed, but tell you what, I didn't feel like 'ohmyarling'ing' for hours on end, it drove me insane. So I moved on, thank god.

It seemed to me that the book was more full of theory than practical application. There was far far more theory than the beginner could get a grasp on because regardless of whether or not it mentions 10 or 40 chords--I didn't have 3 down by the time it was mentioning ridiculous amounts of them.

By far the most progress made was by playing. Not reading the endless amounts of dry theory. Now going back to this, a year later, it makes sense because I can apply it.

About half the songs were garbage to me. That may just be me though. When its frustrating to learn a starting song over 30 seconds or so, and you're playing the song and thinking 'this song kind of sucks'--there isn't much inspiration to continue. That being said, there were some songs I loved, particularly towards the end.

Anyway, I learned alot. A lot was useless. It more challenging than I expected for a beginners book but had enough content to keep me permanently busy. This book could be cut in half, or less. Still, I liked it.

Ethan

Years ago, I tried my hand at folk guitar, memorizing the few necessary chords to accompany myself, but never advancing any further. Recently, I decided to take the next step and really learn how to play the guitar. In examining several "How To" books I came upon Frederick Noad's, "The Complete Guide to Playing the Guitar." What a find! It has made learning to play the guitar easy, painless, and more importantly for me, fun. His book has taught me to read music, using both tablature and conventional notation, proper finger placement and various other techniques. Each step was carefully and clearly explained, and the book covers a broad range of styles of guitar playing as well as priceless bits of information about the instrument. It is a splended book.

I just started learning the guitar (classical).
After checking out all the guitar books at the local library this is the book I am going to purchase. It is well laid out and relatively easy to understand.

The book covers all styles of playing but is based around the nylon stringed classical guitar. It probably isn't the best choice for those interested in the electric guitar.
Also be sure to look at more reviews at amazon.com. Amazon.ca only had two other reviews when this was written (Sept 03)

I'm a largely self-taught 50's "folkie" (i.e. full of bad habits and stalled at open string chords and simple pattern picking), so this book's orderly, logical yet rapid progression from first baby steps to fancy footwork in flamenco and classical techniques was perfect. I could skim past the stuff I already knew, while appreciating that it would be very helpful to the novice.

It has good illustrations of the parts and nomenclature of various guitars, tells you how to buy a guitar, how to hold it, how to sit, how to position your hands. It quickly gets you playing basic chords, but keeps you working on technique--how to make rest and free strokes properly, how to count time and learn to read and play different rhythm structures, how to make barre chords without buzzing, or killing your fingers. Along the way, it shows you how to read tablature, and then how to read music notation, all the while, practicing simple familiar songs.

The last half of the book is where it gets into more advanced techniques of folk and country picking styles, and an introduction to making some of the characteristic sounds of flamenco, finishing with brief treatments of Latin, blues and classical styles. A pretty full package, well done, well illustrated, at a pretty cheap price. With this book and 20 hours practice a week for the rest of your life...you too, could be a star.

It would be better to pick up a guitar and learn for yourself than to try to learn to play guitar following the error-filled pages of this manual. The examples and theory lessons are incorrect in places, and unless you are somewhat familiar with musical theory, you won't know which instructions are correct and which are not. This book could start you off with some handicaps if you are just starting to play guitar for the first time.

I think this book could be good for some people. However, I want to be clear that the title of this book is completely mis-leading. It should be titled "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Playing the CLASSICAL Guitar." After getting into this book, it is clear that Frederick Noad is focused on classical guitar methods. If that's what you're looking for, then you should consider this book.

But for those people who prefer to learn to play with a pick/plectrum, this book is useless. Literally.

Likewise, Noad's focus on finger-style techniques makes me doubt his expertise in covering some styles of music like folk, country, blues, and rock.

I'm giving this book 3 stars because I think it might be useful for those who want to learn finger-style playing and classical techniques. But I'm not happy that the title mis-led me into buying a book that is not at all what I thought it would be.