Customer Reviews

Rhythm Guitar: The Complete Guide

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent book for all guitarists--beginner to advanced. The book starts with very basic chords and rhythm, but by 8th chapter (there are 37 chapters), I started feeling the limitations of my limited playing style. Note that the book is meant for serious guitar players and requires quite some dedication in terms of practice. My only compaint is that there is no accompanying CD, which I think is essential for any music book. In any case, it's a great book. I also recommend buying the book "Latin Guitar" by the same author, which is a little more advanced. All of MI's books are great, wish they had easier admission requirements :-(

Bruce Buckingham is a highly sought after and competent instructor from the Guitar Institute of Technology, at Musician's Institute, Hollywood, California.

Bruce and Eric do an excellent job in laying out and presenting systems of information in regards to fretboard knowledge. They also present a very thorough presentation of all of the various facets of learning and playing rhythm guitar. With THIRTY SEVEN chapters, this book far outweighs it's competition on the market, without beginning to consider the price comparisons. To find that it is more than competitively priced then becomes an added bonus. I had the wonderful experience of having Bruce as both a classroom guitar instructor and a private guitar instructor while attending G.I.T. I was considering trying to find something from the M.I. press and comparing it to other books available for use with my own guitar students. Not only is this book extremely thorough, I found that there were things that I still needed to review contained in it. After having classes with Bruce, it will be nice to take the learning one step further before passing it on to my own students. I will most definitly be using it as an intermediate guitar primer with my students, in supplement to my own additional curriculum.

Rhythm Guitar: The Complete Guide: This book seems to be design as a text book for a course, therefore is not easy to follow without the help of an instructor. Understanding of music theory and many music concepts are presume to be understood. In other words, if a have not read "Music Principles for the Skeptical Guitarist" by Bruce Emery before buying this book I would have lost my money. Exercises are presented in a "vacuum" and I find myself just strumming along a chord progression whose implication or role within chord music theory is not explained. Because the book does not have a CD, I am unsure if I am performing the exercises correctly. If you have a good understanding of chord theory or somebody that can help you with it, go ahead and by the book as it is very comprehensive (141 pages) and I am sure you will get a lot from it. However, it your are just starting to play guitar, or you do not have a good understanding of chord theory buy something else because the book will sound to you like a chemistry or physics text book, perhaps even worst, because Rhythm Guitar: The complete guide do not have as much written explanations, but a ton of diagrams.

Of course, this book is not perfect, there's some flaws, for example:
- there's a gap between the first seven chapters and the rest of the book, the first seven chapters are pretty accesible for a beguiner but, starting in chapter eigth the level required is raised a lot so a beguiner may have a lot of trouble finding his way trougth the examples.

- Some aspects doesn't have enought explanation, some chapters may have 3 pages or so and you feel like there's something missing to fully "get" the idea.

Eventhought, this is the best book I've seen so far about rhythm guitar, it is by far the most complete in terms of aspects of rhythm playing and has a fairly good amount of chords to show the student. This is not a book for guys just looking around, it is designed for serious study for a reletive long period (It might take nine months to a year of a consistent practice to absorve the content of the book). Botton line, if you want to learn rhythm guitar a little bit further than the average ballad to impress a girl, this is your book.

One piece of advice: No book can stand on his own, to fully integrate the content of the book I suggest the Tom Kolb "Chord Progressions" as a companion, and maybe some others as your hability improves.

I am a beginner, well only a few months in so I'm not that great.

I have a co-worker who is a professional guitar teacher and graduated from MI and recommended this book to me along with Guitar Soloing also by MI Press. He mentioned that I get both books and learn on them and go cover to cover working both together and i will get pretty good by the end of them.

I haev been working this book for over a week, I am still slow on progressions and transferring from one chord to the next (thats my bad since i'm new so it takes time to get better) But the book is very helpful and I am learning a lot. Chords and progressions is the very basic start of music and rhythm guitar is important for a basis to playing any music, knowing chords n such. I enjoy the book but am still learning. For those just starting out, this will get you into the mix but you have to practice like hell when you first start. My fingers hurt like hell when playing from this book as holding down multiple strings for long periods of time kills the tips of my fingers.

Great book, I would recommend it, almost any song can be played with this rhythm section book learned well. Once that's done you can move up to soloing and thats even more fun and challenging :)

Frankly, I am not entirely too sure what other reviews mean as not for beginners or concerning its text. I am certainly a novice and do not have a teacher, and I wanted something that presented formal exercises for practicing chord rhythms. *It does exactly that.* It presents chords with fingering, followed by exercises to practice, interspersed with rhythmic pattern lessons. Sure, a CD would be nice to hear the subtle differences in the rhythms themselves, but since metronome use is essential to the exercises, not having a CD doesn't bother me in the least.

If you are looking for something that teaches you songs and how to play rhythm through that, then this books is certainly not for you. If you are looking for a large book of formal exercises to increase your technical ability, then this is a worthy purchase.

I bought this book when I first started playing guitar years ago. I could not get very far in the book originally so I just put it down and did not pick it up again until recently. I realized the reason I could not get very far was because I had no knowledge of theory. This book assumes you have at least a basic knowledge of music theory but it doesn't make it obvious from the description or if you're just leafing through it at a store.

Now that I have some understanding of theory, this book is helpful, but all its' lessons I've already picked up from other sources. I find it very useful as a compendium of rhythm guitar information. I mostly use it when I think "how do I do that again?" and I just have to look through this book instead of searching through a dozen different books to find the information I need. It's a great timesaver, but not really helpful if you're just starting to play.

Been playing guitar for 20 years. Been teaching overseas multiple years as well. And I must say after looking at TONS of material that this is one of the best for rhythm guitar.

I have read the book over multiple times now (which includes practicing) and I find that as you do it more often, the material gradually soaks in. I've had this kind of experience with learning jazz theory as well (i.e, Mark Levine's Jazz Theory and Jazz Piano Book) where repetitive reading and review unearths more treasures.

Honestly, the material is not entirely for beginners, but everyone has different methods of assimilating knowledge into practical (i.e., jamming with ease). Some beginners will need an instructor. Others will not. It's, of course, always better to learn in person from one whose skill set tops yours.

In summary, I vouch for the content of the book to be high-quality and excellent. Be patient though. It'll definitely take some time and patience.

This is a pretty comprehensive book. But don't expect to learn all you can from it alone. It really does need a CD or maybe even a DVD with lectures. Reading this M.I?

That said it is a very comprehensive book. If you're trying to learn this at home alone you'll have your work cut out for you. That is a kind way of saying you'll become frustrated. I needed to use software, metronome and instructor to be able to understand what was written down. Maybe it was just me but if this came easily then I probably wouldn't have needed to buy the book. If you have access to the above (guitar software, instructor) then you can add a star or two. If you don't now any music theory at all then subtract 2 stars.

Having access to a good instructor and using this as a syllabus is the best route.

This book will take you from beginner to solid rhythm player. It is a true musical trip into rhythm guitar and much more useful than a bunch of chord diagrams. Some chord theory is covered, and the chords are related to scales and positions. Short practice examples stress "basic moves" instead of full tunes, which is the best way to learn. If you can get through this book, you will fit in as a rhythm player in just about any style. I give 4 instead of 5 stars because there is no CD included - you do need to be able to read a bit to get the strumming patterns. This book is an excellent companion to "Chord-Tone Soloing", another great book from MI.