The Acoustic Guitar Method - Complete Edition: Learn to Play Using the Techniques and Songs of American Roots Music (Acoustic Guitar (String Letter)) (Paperback)

by David Hamburger (Author)
Key Phrases: open third string, second fret, first fret, Bill Monroe, Sally Goodin, Doc Watson (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A complete collection of all three Acoustic Guitar Method books and CDs in one volume! Learn how to play guitar with the only beginning method based on traditional American music that teaches you authentic techniques and songs. Beginning with a few basic chords and strums, you'll start right in learning real music drawn from blues, folk, country and bluegrass traditions. You'll learn how to find notes on the fingerboard, expand your collection of chords by learning songs in various keys, and learn different kinds of picking patterns. When you're done with this method series, you'll know dozens of the tunes that form the backbone of American music, using a variety of flatpicking and fingerpicking techniques.Songs include: Bury Me Beneath the Willow * Delia * Frankie and Johnny * The Girl I Left Behind Me * House of the Rising Sun * Ida Red * In the Pines * Little Sadie * Man of Constant Sorrow * Sally Goodin * Scarborough Fair * Will the Circle Be Unbroken? * and many more.

Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: String Letter Publishing (August 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1890490555
• ISBN-13: 978-1890490553
• Product Dimensions: 11.8 x 9.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #231,202 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything I wanted for learning guitar except theory, June 26, 2003

By A Customer

I love this book and 3-CD set, but everyone learns their own way. What worked for me in this approach was the following: Mr. Hamburger includes a great amount of discussion with each lesson, belaboring how to transition from, say, a particular D chord fingering to a G chord, spelling out which finger to move when and where. There are small but clear photographs showing the appropriate finger position for chords and strumming positions. He anticipates the kinds of problems that you are likely to have, and offers clear suggestions on how to overcome them. He structures the lessons in a way that they build logically on each other. When he illustrates the music on the CD, he plays exactly what is in the lesson -- no embellishments to show his stuff, just clear examples of what you should be playing. He plays each tune at the right speed, and then replays the tune at the slow speed that he expects the student to begin with. It is easy to play along with Mr. Hamburger as you learn. The full course introduces all the usual topics for acoustic guitar, including basic strumming, introductory finger picking and flat picking, pull-offs, hammer-ons, etc. The coverage is not in-depth enough to make you a master, but it is detailed enough to get you a first-year level of understanding by the time you complete the third book.
The music used throughout is traditional American music, "folk," if you will. If you are anxious to start your own garage rock band, this may not be the music of choice for you. If you do choose to learn guitar playing from this, you should supplement the text with some music theory....
I cannot think of anything in the lesson book that I thought was inappropriate. You aren't likely to find everything you would ever want to know about guitar in one place. But if you do, this book will be "volume one" of that library.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nice intro to guitar, especially for folk music fans, February 10, 2003

By A Customer

I recommend this book for anyone who is picking up a guitar for the first time, but already has some basic knowledge of music notation. It gets you up to speed right away playing simple roots and folk songs, and emphasizes beginner drills, such as switching back and forth between two chords over and over until you can do it smoothly.

This book might also be nice for a beginner who has some guitar experience and is looking for a colletion of folk-style songs to learn and practice

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid intro for folk music fans, November 8, 2004

By	Yellow Chair - See all my reviews

Hamburger does a good job of pacing things for beginners. Enough songs to keep you interested & focused on mastering basic skills, but not so much that you get overwhelmed. A good instroduction to the basic elements that define various folk styles. Also, as another reviewer points out, there are many practice tracks on the CDs, at least one for each exercise leading up to the featured songs and including recordings of simple SLOW strumming of each chord as it's introduced. This might seem like overkill to some, but for anyone who's new to learning to play an instrument, the first great lesson to learn is PRACTICE SLOWLY. Hamburger demonstrates this principle well! Also, playing along with the tracks helps develop solid timing and it's a little more interesting than strumming along to your metronome. If the flatpicking version of Sally Goodin is simple, well, that's because it's for BEGINNING players. Once I mastered Hamburger's simple arrangement, I was able to HEAR better when listening to other recordings of the tune and understand how fiddlers and guitarists and others have embellished and expanded it through improv over generations. It didn't take long before I started experimenting with adding to the arrangement myself--but you have to start at the bottom. He also does a good job of emphasizing the need to learn clear chord changes, something that's best learned a few chords at a time and that can save you a lot of frustration down the road if you focus on it from the start. I appreciate the emphasis on quality of sound in the early stages rather than on pages of chord diagrams.

The layout of the book itself is very clean and easy to read--something many other methods could improve on. My only "complaint" is the stiff binding--spiral would have been nice.

There's not much theory here, but I had theory from other sources before I started learning the guitar. I'm not sure how this method would look to someone who doesn't know music basics already. It's been so long since I had my first do-re-mi lesson that I can't quite picture the world without solfege anymore. As a general intro to folk guitar, this one's as good as the best I've seen.