Choosing Guitar Books

I am a dedicated guitarist. I have taught myself through the years. Occasionally I have employed the assistance of a guitar teacher to help me in my quest to understand how it all works and how to improve my playing. Unfortunately I have not really ever found a guitar teacher who has helped me in the way I hoped.

This has meant that most of the information regarding the guitar that I have learnt has come from self-teaching and guitar books.

I have invested hundreds, if not thousands of pounds in books teaching different aspects of the guitar. Some are good, most are poor. So what do you need to look for to get a good book?

Well, firstly, most guitar books claim they will allow you to understand things very easily. I have found that the majority of the times these books just contain pointless exercises that, if you do not know how to use these with your playing are useless. Also it is important to consider the fact that most of these exercises will only allow you to progress with the guitar if the correct technique is exercised.

In fact, if the above is not correctly carried out it can lead to very hard to break bad habits. These habits take years of hard to work to get rid of, even if they are even spotted at all.

My advice would be to steer clear of books that just give basic examples like this.

So what makes a good book? Well in my opinion all budding guitarists are learning the guitar for one primary reason. This is to learn how to play and create music with their instrument. Sure, every guitarist might want to play fast but do they want to play fast music of play fast noise? I think the first of the two. This makes learning exercises pointless, as they are not musical.

I am a firm believer in the way of learning a piece of music to improve. You will undoubtedly get stuck with your technique and this is where you work on it. Focus in on the part to accomplish the goal of learning music. If you fail after a good effort move on and come back to it in the future.

If you are looking for a book to teach this then I would suggest looking at some of the books that come with an audio CD with the backing track (this makes it more fun) and a slowed down version of the guitar parts. There are loads out there like this and it will really tech you the best lessons you can learn. Make sure you also learn the chords if you are focusing on lead and vice versa - this will give you a better understanding, much quicker, rather than realising at a later date -

" oops I should have focussed on chords as they help my lead playing and vice versa"

Anyhow – I hope this article has helped on your guitar-playing quest.