Customer Reviews

Practical Theory for Guitar: A Player's Guide to Essential Music Theory in Words, Music, Tablature, and Sound, Book & CD [With CD]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The best and easiest to comprehend book that I have ever seen on the subject of Musc Theory, Scales, Modes, and Composition. The accompaning CD is wonderful as well, and gives so many great examples, that the reader will find him or herself wanting to spend hours learning, and playing along with them. This is something that is not often seen of books on this subject matter.

Barvo!!!!

I've been playing guitar over 15 years, teaching it full-time nearly 10 and let me tell you, this is THE best theory book for the guitar I have ever seen. I've been using it exclusively for theory in my lessons and I recommend it to everyone I know who plays. I find it to be by far the easiest to comprehend and the best for putting together the "big picture" of music theory. Keep in mind though, you will still have to re-read many, many parts of this book, even as many as 3+ times. You will still have to put forth and enormous amount of effort to take this material and make it a functional part of your playing. This is not a method book or an exercise book. It is an explanation of theory and a reference tool. If you are having a hard time understanding this book, you may not be ready for a full-blown theory book or you may be expecting easy results.

There are a few things that could be a hair better, but it's really nit-picking. The main one is that the examples to improvise over are way too short. Go pick up a copy of one of Peter Vogl's "Let's Jam" Cds. Problem solved. I also wouldn't mind having a simple fingering for ALL the intervals on one page. Again, kinda nit-picking. I personally use some slightly different fingerings for some of the scales, but if you're really practicing these as much as you need to, you'll have no problem figuring out which of the many ways to finger these scales you like the best. After all, you'll actually know how to spell them and put them together, so you'll be able to re-finger just about anything you want!

Long story short, this book is the way to go. You'd have to buy several others to even come close. Anyone who can't understand it is simply not spending enough time with it.

This is an excellent book, but be forewarned it is not for beginners. You should have a firm grasp on basic scale theory, keys, and chords before tackling this book. Also, this is not a book that teaches you exercises on learning the scales. If you don't already have the major scale down in multiple positions and all keys, this is not the book for you. A better choice might be Tom Kolb's book on music theory. Also, as someone mentioned, this is not a how-to book with exercises.

If you at least have the major scale down in all positions and keys, this is a great reference to get you going on all the modes, plus a bunch of other scales... and more!

I found it to be primarily a solid intermediate text/reference book on scales, chords, and music theory. Each of the 7 modes of the major scale (plus a bunch of other scales) is explained ... not just a fingering pattern (yes, those are there too)... but the intervals are explained as well as which chord's fit the scale. I found the writing is concise and clear.

Towards the end, there is a good section on chords and harmonizing in various scales. I found this book to be a perfect fit with my current guitar instructor and use it as a reference with my weekly lessons.

If you are 'self teaching', you will need to be disciplined to take the material and come up with the proper exercises to learn it. Again, that is not shown in the book.

EXCELENT! Ive founded in this book a great guide of music theory for guitar players. This book is an excelent point to met the basic theory as intervals, chords, harmony, scale pattern and most important how you can implemets all of these topics to start to compose your own music.

Not just another "how to play" book, this one is concise with lots information on guitar theory and especially helpful if you want to learn improvisitional techniques.

Ok I'll start with the pros:

-I like the feel of the chords on the example tracks.
-I like the fact that the intervals are shown on the
scale/mode fingerings.
-Overall the guitar neck is broken down extensively and
the information provided is enough to open a floodgate of
possibilities.

Now for the cons:

-they are all 2 chord examples and you only have 30 seconds to
play over them (hardly enough time to experiment with a new scale/mode you've just learned).
-The amount of exercises does not even come close to compensating for the amount of information provided. If you use only this book to learn the information, you will be playing over the same sections far beyond the stretch of boredom.
-like many theory books, it just throws a bunch of fingerings at you and says 'here play them' without really giving you a practical method of getting comfortable with them.

That's my 2 cents. Overall the layout and concepts are pretty good. If you are self motivated and apply yourself to this information, you could really get a lot out of it.

I have to disagree with the several reviewers who state this is not for the beginner. I think it is well suited for any one interested in the subject. Although I feel I had a pretty good grasp of M.T. before buying this, I also think Latarski starts at the beginning in a way someone new to MT can understand. Come on people! Music Theory is NOT all that esoteric. If you graduated from High school, you should beable to understand this. I have not yet used the CD's, so no comment on thier usefulness. Don't know. But the written material is NOT too difficult for any one with average intelligence to understand. NOT ROCKET SCIENCE!! I rated it 4 stars because i have not read the entire book, nor used the CD's. Could be 5, not sure yet.

It is not a book for beginners and not a book for people who wants just to fry the guitar learning pentatonic scales.

It is about scales and intervals. It is about understanding the different sounds of music.

It is about the tensions of the notes, the jazz, blues and other styles.

It helps you to understand what scales go over different chords and vice versa.

If you want to learn the instrument beyond the basic it is a very good choice.

Without providing a detailed review -since I have barely started to scratch the surface of this book- I felt compelled to at least offer some clarification for anyone considering this great book.

The examples are not all 2-chord examples. I've already seen examples containing 1, 2, 3 and 4 chords. In any case, the number of chords used for the examples is a bit irrelevant. The examples serve their purpose.

I'm not sure what Chris means when he talks about exercises in his review. I don't recall seeing any exercises at all. Perhaps the "sequential ideas" on page 102?

That's fine by me, since this is not a book about exercises or licks. To borrow from a popular phrase, this book is more about "teaching you how to fish" and not about "giving you a fish." With the information the author provides, the reader will be better able to understand the exercises found in many other books. Again, this book is not really about such exercises.

Regarding the "Fingering Patterns" my opinion is similar to what what I mentioned regarding exercises. Perhaps it can be confusing for someone just starting out on guitar, but I guess that most guitarists will have no trouble with the Fingering Patterns. Again, this is not about exercises, sequences, licks, etc., but rather to show the guitarist where the notes are on the fingerboard, in different positions, and in condensed and extended versions. More importantly, the patterns show the root notes and intervallic relationships.

For anyone interested in more exercises I would recommend Guitar Soloing by Daniel Gilbert & Beth Marlis from MI, Advancing Guitar by Joe Carter, Ultimate Scales & Modes for Guitar by Sal Salvador, etc.

For more detailed instruction regarding right and left-hand techniques, Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar by Troy Stetina is a great book.

In summary, I really enjoyed Don Latarski's approach in this book. He covers a lot of material in a straightforward manner, and the musical examples further illustrate the different sounds with some great playing by Don.

I agree that the musical examples are short. If I'm interested in experimenting with a particular progression, it would be very easy to record it myself and then play over it. Still, it would be nice to have longer backing tracks, and I would also like to see an explanation on how/why the chords for the progressions were chosen. Beginning on page 110 there's a lot of information regarding chord construction, progressions, harmonization, etc., so perhaps there I'll find those explanations. As mentioned before, I wanted to post this review although I have not finished reading the book.

if you need to learn some valuable music theory, this book is written FOR GUITAR and definately sums it up. great for a musician looking to expand his/her musical knowledge.