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Old 01-14-2017, 06:26 PM
fivesense fivesense is offline
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Default Books to supplement lessons and online resources

I perused through similar threads on the subject, including archived items but they were all older threads.

I'm looking for additional books that will complement my in-person lessons. I picked up the Hal Leonard Guitar Methods book 1-3 at the store today; that's the book they use when teaching lessons so I figured I may as well have it.

I have Guitars for Dummies (found an online PDF copy and have it on my iPad). I grabbed an old copy of How to Play Guitar by Roger Evans from my local library.

What's another book to have around? I read that Bruce Emery's books are pretty good. Is it advisable to pick up his Guitar from Scratch prequel and the sequel? I'm not sure how much they overlap or if they are standalone works.
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Old 01-14-2017, 08:22 PM
reeve21 reeve21 is offline
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I guess that depends on your style.

For flat picking with a heavy bluegrass influence the Miller books Flatpicking Essentials volumes 1-8? are good.

For beginning finger style I really like Mark Hanson's books.
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Old 01-15-2017, 08:41 AM
Pine Pine is offline
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I'm a late stage beginner myself, and have and use all the materials below.

I am assuming that since your teacher is using the HL series to teach from that you are a beginner, learning basic guitar skills. You don't say whether you read notation, or are learning TAB.

The Hal Leonard books are excellent. They cover basic chords, first position notes, notation and TAB, depending on the version you have. They move along at an appropriate pace, and cover the basics.

The "Skeptical Guitarist" series from Bruce are excellent as well. The guitar from scratch book covers chords and strumming very well, in an entertaining manner. Single notes and reading music are covered in the sequel.

The Flatpicking Essentials books are excellent as well, but are a bit more advanced, not for early beginners. (Only my opinion of course)

The resource I used the most, and found to be the best for me is justinguitar.com. It is free, doesn't require you to sign up, and the content is excellent.

Looking back, I think I got a bit distracted with too many materials.

Good luck with your journey!
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Old 01-15-2017, 09:16 AM
Riverwolf Riverwolf is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pine View Post
The resource I used the most, and found to be the best for me is justinguitar.com. It is free, doesn't require you to sign up, and the content is excellent.
You can always purchase his complete courses on books and Dvd's.
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Old 01-15-2017, 09:22 AM
Kerbie Kerbie is offline
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I'd agree that Mark Hanson's two books on fingerstyle guitar are fantastic. Hard to go wrong there. I've gotten some benefit out of Bruce Emery's "Skeptical" series, although they are written in a quite different tone from Mark's. Both are helpful... just a matter of which style you like. I enjoy learning from books and can usually get a lot out of them. Good luck.
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Old 01-15-2017, 09:49 AM
dkstott dkstott is offline
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PUMPING NYLON by Scott Tennant... Don't let the name lead you astray... The book is full is great exercises for left and right hand playing.
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Old 01-15-2017, 11:03 AM
Clallam Clallam is offline
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I have all of the books mentioned in this thread and find multiple explanations helpful sometimes.

I agree with the above thoughts although I would add the Hanson books to the too advanced for a early stage beginner list. Both Hanson and Miller assume you know a fair number of chords and can change between them. When you are to decide if you want to learn fingerpicking or flatpicking one of them would be the best place to start.


I found Justinguitar the most useful since I didn't have an instructor to provide a visual example. Justin runs his site on the honor system and requests that those who can buy something to help with the cost of the site. I have both his basic course book and his beginner songbook. The songs in it are ones you've heard and they use skills learned up to that point in his course. Most other books don't do that since the cost of using copyrighted songs is so high. They use songs that are old enough to be out of copyright or that the author wrote.
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Old 01-18-2017, 12:18 PM
Paully Paully is offline
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I've had good results with "Uncle Tims First Year"
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