Customer Reviews

Mel Bay 20000BCD First Lessons Beginning Guitar Learning Chords / Playing Songs

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I teach private music lessons. I have used this book with several students.

So far, this is the best book I've found for beginning students. However, I have a few problems with it. It starts out well, with two songs which only use one chord, "EZ G," which is a version of G only using one finger, the third finger on the first string, third fret (only strum the bottom four strings). These songs are at a relatively leisurely pace, around 93bpm. The next song is the first one which includes a chord change, from EZ G to D7. Right here is the first problem:

Problem 1: On song three, the book instructs the player to strum the quarter note beat, which is FASTER than the previous songs at 115bpm. This is very difficult for a beginner to do along with a new, unfamiliar chord change, and is a large leap in skill level between the first two songs and the third. At this point, I teach my students to strum only on the downbeat, which allows them three beats of space to switch the chord. I use this technique for the next several pages, because at this time, the focus should not be on how fast or well the student can strum, but on how fast they can switch chords.

Problem 2: Even though the book explains in written form about time signatures, there is never a CD track which gives an example. All the count-ins for the songs tracks are done with drum stick hits, without a vocal count. I have to write in the book and count along with my students in order to give them an understanding of the time signatures, and how the beats work out in the measures. Otherwise, most of them could not learn how to play the songs with the chords in the right places.

Problem 3: When the melody of the song has a pickup measure, the count-in will happen with two measures of count, instead of one. This is confusing for the beginner students. It's confusing for ME, and often takes me by surprise. Really, Mel Bay, do you expect a beginning guitarist to understand pickup measures? Again, as stated, there is no vocal numerical count-in, adding to the confusion.

Problem 4: Even though all of the songs are vocal songs, the melody and words are not sung on the practice tracks. If a student does not know the song (and most of my students do not know most of the songs), this omission takes away a valuable resource for letting them know where they are in the song.

Problem 5: Some of the songs use very syncopated (i.e. Caribbean) drum beats. For a beginner just trying to get a feel for the quarter note beat, and strumming the whole note or quarter note, this is disconcerting.

At this time, I feel like I have two options. One, I can take the supplied CD tracks, load them into my recording software, and overdub vocal count-ins, vocal counts throughout the first few songs, and sung melody with words for all the songs. Two, I can author my own lesson materials.