Customer Reviews

Guitar Soloing: The Contemporary Guide to Improvisation (CD Included!)

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2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

So... I've got tons and tons of tabs for the guitar... I can play all sorts of music from Led Zeppelin to Zappa to SAntana to Yngwie to Lamb of God to NIrvana to Bach (WTF?)... just giving you a basis for my experience... I WISH I BOUGHT THIS BOOK 10 YEARS AGO... no joke.

I never took a lesson, so I always felt that I missed something... This book confirms my suspicion! So much I didn't know... Such a fool..

But the book isn't overwhelming AT ALL (until you start to get to the end of the book)... most of it shows you how to play along to blues/rock/pop. Its not like other scale books where you see the same scale 4 frets up (but it does help you understand root notes and lots of Theory).. I love theory.

The book is written by the Musicians Institute, the best music college in America. I think they know what they are doing when it comes to teaching music... I also bought the Guitar fret board Workout from MI, but it had too much busy work in it for me.. (too much writing, but I would still recommend the book)). I just want to play well, and I want to be able to improvise over ANYTHING... now, because of THIS book my playing has taken leaps and bounds (for technicality/improvisional/style and harmony)... Thanks Larry H. Parker... I mean MI.

Warning, this book is not for those picking up a guitar for the first time. The book focuses mainly on theory and therefore should not be used as a starting point for building dexterity.
However, once you build some dexterity, this book has a lot of information that a real guitarist needs to know. When i say real, i mean someone who knows how to actually create music as opposed to someone who knows how to repeat songs. That is what the book is for, to create music, and learning this difficult art takes time and patience, so don't rush through the chapters. Also, the keys to the riffs given are indicated and finding the right scale pattern(s) of each riff is a way of learning as opposed to having everything handed on a silver platter. This is what makes this book so effective. So if you buy this book, remember, this book requires a lot of patience, time, and dedication and is NOT for the lazy musician.

this book is extremely valuable to learn some essential concepts of soloing on the guitar. No, it won't teach you everything you need to know playing this conplex instrument, but hey, it's a great start. If you have a basic knowledge of the guitar you can use this book to help develop an ear for music and also beef up ur chops...I don't understand the people that were doggin this book before. It is kind of hard and frustrating to get thru, I'm still working on it, but hey....welcome to the world of music, I am a long time musician and have had to work my rear off to become sucessful. This is a tool that will help! peace

Don

The title has the word "Improvisation" which really means that you have to be in a creative space when using this book. If you are looking for a step by step playbook on great solos this is not the book. This book is designed to challenge you to look inside yourself and "Improvise", key word is "Improvise".. YOU have to come up with the music not the book or CD. The book gives you the tools not the solution. A beginner can learn the patterns, which is work and requires time and dexterity. I'm not confident that a beginner would benefit using this book only because I think it would be frustrating working through this book with no prior knowledge. It could sit on your bookshelf until you are ready.. a future goal. However, I've been playing for 7-8 years covering songs, writing songs, and picking up theory as I go. I should have picked it up around year 2-3 but I wasn't that interested in soloing. I find this book to be a great starting point to assist my development towards improvisation. No book is perfect but this is pretty damn good. The recordings are mechanical but they are effective. They are really just backing tracks and it is up to you to "Improvise" over them. So I would ask the people that don't like the recordings on the CD... Do you not like the recordings or the solo your playing along with the recording? Don't mean to be negative but really, is it the recording or are you just frustrated?
In my opinion this is not a beginner book and this book requires you to be in a creative space in order to benefit... Updated 9/1/2010- Great book! gets better as the years go bye.

Wow, some people loved this book, some people hated it, and one reviewer went absolutely off the deep end into lala land! So maybe you're wondering what's up with this book? Well, before you worry about how much its gonna hurt if that $19.95 doesn't make you the next Eddie Van Halen by next week, start by asking yourself, what are you looking for?

If you're looking for a book to teach you the "hottest blues licks" so that next week at Guitar Center you can wow the staff with your new found "chops" by grinding out the same old tired twangs that justifies the staff keeping Suicide Hotline on speed dial, then sorry, this isn't the book for you. As a matter of fact, you don't need a book, just go on YouTube... now you can play the beginning of "Crazy Train" and "Hot for Teacher"... you're a pro! Hooray! See, that was easy! See ya and good luck!

Still here? Ok, well, if you're looking for instruction that teaches you the foundation and building blocks of how to IMPROVISE, in other words, come up with YOUR OWN IDEAS... then this book is friggin fantastic! Be warned, the material is presented so matter-of-fact that its easy to under-estimate how long each chapter is going to take. But if you read the instructions, and do ALL the exercises properly before moving on to the next subject, your soloing is going to improve by leaps and bounds.

For the people who say the book is "boring", well, they need to do their homework. Guys, this is a musical instrument, not a video game. If you want to play like a pro then it takes time and quality practice. If you don't have the discipline to put the time in it takes to master your instrument, then hey, that's what Guitar Hero is for. Research what guitarists like Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai did for practice routines. There's no substitute for hard work.

But, its not all dadadadadada up, dadadadadada down. The book encourages you to take what you learn in each chapter, and improvise on your own. That's the whole point of the CD that's included. Yep, the music is a little hokey, and the riffs a bit of a challenge to figure out, (however, each riff is played at the beginning of each song, so you get to hear how it should sound) but did you follow the advice of just taking the basic pattern and playing it slowly over the music, listening to how each note works with the chord progression? I bet you didn't. Again, if you're looking for someone to say "play this riff, and people will think you're cool" forget it. If you've ever wondered how The Edge comes up with those great, simple, melodic riffs then this book is for you.

To be fair to the reviewers that said the book was boring, you need to remember that its up to you to take what you learn in each chapter, and apply it by improvising, however you can, over some music. That's really the way you'll truly learn. If you followed this book, and had a Boss DR-880 drum machine, and were able to see immediately how well what they are showing you works, you'd thrilled with this book.

Honestly guys, if you really want to learn how to be a creative soloist, get a BOSS DR-880 Rhythm Drum Machine - Dr. Rhythm, this book, and the Musician's Institute Guitar Fretboard Workbook and in a year or two with daily practice you'll be soaring.

If you want to be that "cool dude" at the guitar store, and just want to know how to play other peoples riffs (and there is nothing wrong with that if that's truly all you're looking for) then this book isn't for you.

I am new to the guitar and only have been playing a few months so I'm a bit slow, but guitar takes time to get good and fast.

A co-worker of mine has been playing guitar for over 25 years and graduated with a music-guitar degree from Musician's Institute and one of his teachers there is the author of this book. My co-worker recommended this to me along with the Rhythm Guitar book to go hand in hand to get better at guitar.

The Rhythm book teaches the basics of chords and progressions and basic music stuff as most music is mainly rhythm all together, but this book gets into the more fun stuff of soloing. Soloing is fun, but takes lots of practice. The book teaches you fast and when played in sync with the Rhythm book (as recommended by my friend) I should be able to get pretty good when both books are done cover to cover.

This book is a little advanced for me as a new beginner, but if you practice well enough and take you're time you can learn this stuff well. It's very well drawn out and explains everything for the most part very well. Luckily for me when I get stuck or lost on what they mean I just ask my friend who used this book in correlation with his class at MI with the teacher, and he gets me on the right track.

Great book, I would recommend this along with the Rhythm Guitar book also by MI. Play these together cover to cover and in a year with dedicated practice and memorization you should be pretty good at the guitar I would say :)

One of the problems I had with this book was the length of the segments within each chapter.Its either rediculously short or long and, to get right down to it, boring.It becomes more of a homework assignment then an enjoyable lesson.Ive actually learned more by looking up basic theory online because I can look up and reference any "blank" spots Im having trouble with.This book, by itself, might leave you a bit confused.

Very early on it mentions triad arpeggios of the I,IV, and V chords.But I didnt get taught what these were in the book.Or maybe I was when they said what patterns were based of off what chords, but Im honestly not sure, because it doesnt clearly say anything like "btw these chords ARE the I IV and V chords mentioned throughout the book".During the mentioned segment where they compare patterns to the chords, they move the patterns down a few frets, so while still based/shaped around the chord pattern, Im left wondering why the patterns got moved and the root notes changed, instead of showing me a direct connection between the patterns. Also early on, it shows me a moveable pattern, but the root note is the second note in the pattern.Im left wondering why this is, as it also is not explained.

The chapters tend to shuffle back and forth between topics. It goes from major, to major arpegios, to major pentatonics, then to minor, minor pentatonics, then to some more arpeggios,......It does seem like a good idea to keep the minors and the majors together, but the other topics keep coming in and out and ruining the flow, because a few chapters later Im going to have to remember all my major patterns when I just got done breaking down minor scales into pentatonics and arpeggios and seqeunces and by this point im just mad thinking about it.
Its the small things like this that make the book frustrating.You might say"But hey, maybe they think you have a basic understanding before tackling this here book.Maybe you Should know what the I IV and V chords are, buddy". Sorry, but no.Why is the first chapter diving into the bottom of the pit basics then?It goes from alternate picking and simple chromatic exercises into badly explained arpeggios, followed by more simplistic picking patterns to learn as a chapter lesson, and then the chapter usually ends in some type of solo lick that you(sometimes) arent fully aware of the reasoning behind.

The book does come with a companion cd, with tracks from the chapters to learn.I really hope you like bluesy and jazzy guitars.Its another problem I had that made the book even more boring.I do understand learning more then a specific style is good for development, but I felt this didnt hit home with me at all, and I wasnt hearing ANYTHING that I was interested in hearing.

I want you to keep in mind that Im basing this review on past and present experiences with it.I bought this years ago, and havent picked it up in years due to my bad memories of it.I recently gave it a second chance. I advise you to not give it a first.I cant say Ive tried any other books of this nature to date, but I will say that clearly there has to be something better then this.Ill give it two stars because you can learn something from this, but its too dull, frustrating, and badly arranged to make it worth anything higher.

You shouldn't try to learn how to improvise before you can play basic guitar.Start with a Mel Bay or Hal Leonard method book and learn to read play a few tunes competently.Today there are beginner method books that are fun to play with cool tunes and everything.The art of improvising is about creating spontaneous melodies and that never going to be an easy skill to acquire .The only thing this book is lacking is a variety of interesting background tracks to practice the concepts with. Blue shuffles,Pop Ballads,Swing,Rock,Techno,Funk,Country Jazz, etc,etc...It all here the nuts and bolts the tracks would have made it not so academic because to get anything out of the book your going to have practice creating lines your own!Recording yourself against good track and being self critical is the road to improvement.The book is a toolbox your still going to have to transcribe and develop your ears.Bottom line don't begrudge the time!Best for the student who's been playing seriously for two or three years.

What can I say about this book? It's hard to describe the impact this book has had on my playing. I have learned so much about all facets of the guitar, from technique, to practicing, to creating lines and progressions, to learning modes, scales, and arpeggios as well as much more. This book is very complete and it definitely the best guitar book out there. The examples are also excellent, they could easily be the main melody of chart topping songs. I could go on and on about this one, but I won't. Just do yourself a favor and get it.

-Anthony
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I am a self taught guitarist playing for 2 years, and every time I sit down and try to learn something from this book I just get pissed off.

The authors give you riffs to play over the cd, but don't explain where the riffs come from or how to play them. The very first riffs are difficult and frustrating.

You are slapped in the face with scale after scale after scale and variations within them, then given an often too-fast chord progression and a riff that is hard to decipher. Find a better book to learn this.