Quality guitar book for beginning player with musical background

[recstar24]

Hi,

Im looking for a book to get my guitar playing started on the right foot. Im a music teacher with a solid music background and am wanting to advance my own guitar playing to help my teaching <junior high music). I'm a very independent learner and am pretty disciplined when it comes teaching myself and practicing, and am looking for a book that has a little bit of everything - advance strumming techniques, finger style, flat picking, etc.

Thanks for taking the time and I appreciate any recommendations you may have!

[Wyllys]

Rec...

No matter what printed material you find, please consider spending as much time simply listening to good examples as you do in reading and thought.

There is such a wealth of material even on YouTube.

You know that books can't tell you how it sounds just as maps won't transport you to a destination. Books are maps, listening is the trip...

Good luck, have fun.

[jstegeman]

Have you checked out justinguitar.com - lots of good stuff there.

[beninma]

I'm an overall beginner so take this with a grain of salt.

I can already read music from piano. Reading most of the guitar stuff I've done so far is easy for me *in terms of the reading*. (My fingers are another story entirely)

I've been using the Hal Leonard Guitar method books for the note reading stuff. The "Complete Edition books 1/2/3" has been pretty good in terms of playing single note melodies. I'm most of the way through Book 1, not really advancing super fast as I don't have a lot of time but it seems pretty good.

I also have another Hal Leonard book "Guitar Essentials". This one is not so good. They start with strumming and stuff right away and then start introducing some single notes on the strings. They end up repeating some of the same pieces as the "Guitar Method" books but the pieces are not ordered in as sensible of a way. And sometimes when you are strumming the chords to a piece in this book you are in no way ready to play the melody yet whereas the Guitar method book they make sure you can do either. (E.x. in Essentials they'll have you strum chords to a song in a key that they haven't introduced yet.)

Neither of those books does anything with Tab though IIRC and they are very weak in terms of teaching the finger technique.

I bought the Justin Guitar beginners course book and song book within the last month. His approach to chords is way way way better than the other books I've read. I am actually making progress with his exercises to the point I hope I can play through some of the beginner songs while singing within the next month or so. Both Justin's books and videos are great in terms of learning hand positioning and stuff like that. He does tab, but doesn't appear to do standard music notation.

I have found some of the videos on Youtube helpful as well with finger positioning, hand/arm posture, etc.. too. Most of those seem to be teachers offering a few videos as ads though.

[BFD]

Originally Posted by recstar24

Hi,

Im looking for a book to get my guitar playing started on the right foot. Im a music teacher with a solid music background and am wanting to advance my own guitar playing to help my teaching <junior high music). I'm a very independent learner and am pretty disciplined when it comes teaching myself and practicing, and am looking for a book that has a little bit of everything - advance strumming techniques, finger style, flat picking, etc.

Thanks for taking the time and I appreciate any recommendations you may have!

Full disclosure, I haven't shopped for a beginner book in decades, but have been active in the 'assisted guitar learning' community (at a higher level) for a number of years. Books certainly exist, though they tend to be more targeted or specialized, as opposed to 'a little bit of everything'. Several online programs offer a wide variety of styles & levels.

The recommendation to check out justinguitar.com is a good one, and always comes up in these kind of threads. Another large school I've subscribed to is Truefire. They have courses by a huge variety of acoustic and electric teachers covering a wide gamut of levels and styles. This type of instruction is great for motivated learners. You can pay for dvds or downloads of specific courses, or with a subscription, have access to any course in the school. I believe all written materials and backing tracks are available for downloading w/subscription, but video content must be viewed online.

[recstar24]

Originally Posted by Wyllys

Rec...

No matter what printed material you find, please consider spending as much time simply listening to good examples as you do in reading and thought.

There is such a wealth of material even on YouTube.

You know that books can't tell you how it sounds just as maps won't transport you to a destination. Books are maps, listening is the trip...

Good luck, have fun.

Understood! I am a pretty solid sight reader and have a solidly trained ear as a classical musician, so books for me are still useful, as I can "hear" exactly what the books are typically describing. I love YouTube for sure and I think both written and aural forms are great and work for me.

I will definitely check out justinguitar.com, thank you!

[Bjbny]

This Acoustic Method book by David Hamburger is an excellent road map that covers most of what you are looking for:

https://www.amazon.com/Acoustic-Guit...+guitar+method

There is also a companion video available at Homespun.

[recstar24]

Originally Posted by Bjbny

This Acoustic Method book by David Hamburger is an excellent road map that covers most of what you are looking for:

https://www.amazon.com/Acoustic-Guit...+guitar+method

There is also a companion video available at Homespun.

Thank you!

I'm also looking at the mark Hanson Travis picking and fingerstyle books as they seem to come highly recommended here.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by recstar24

Thank you!

I'm also looking at the mark Hanson Travis picking and fingerstyle books as they seem to come highly recommended here.

I ordered a couple of these books out for use by my son. I was disappointed for the most part - too basic, boring, few interesting tunes. It is pretty hit or miss with guitar instruction books in my experience. Online might be a safer bet.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

I ordered a couple of these books out for use by my son. I was disappointed for the most part - too basic, boring, few interesting tunes. It is pretty hit or miss with guitar instruction books in my experience. Online might be a safer bet.

"Interesting tunes" can be an issue, because of copyright restrictions. I don't know the Hanson books, but many teaching books have to make to do with the author's own pieces, or old out-of-copyright tunes.

For someone with your experience, you may well be better off hunting around online (youtube etc), at least to get a better idea of what's around. Guitarists as a breed tend to prefer tab to notation (as I'm sure you know).
There are obviously good books available for classical guitar (at all levels), but they're not going to address strumming and flatpicking (or folk-blues fingerstyle), nor rock, blues or jazz improvisation.
A book like Guitar for Dummies might well suit your purposes, to cover basic techniques in various styles, using a mix of notation and tab.; chord shapes, theory, etc. You could certainly borrow stuff from it for teaching. Beyond there, maybe songbooks by whoever happens to be cool among the kids you're teaching.

In fact, I'd recommend this "8 books in one" version, only slightly more expensive than the original (and great 2nd hand value):
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guitar-All-...ar+for+dummies

[recstar24]

Originally Posted by Bjbny

This Acoustic Method book by David Hamburger is an excellent road map that covers most of what you are looking for:

https://www.amazon.com/Acoustic-Guit...+guitar+method

There is also a companion video available at Homespun.

Forgot about the dummies series! Thanks for the rec, I've always enjoyed their books.

[rlawton]

I'm also a music teacher and have taught guitar classes. Early in my career, I spent a decade or so using guitar to accompany folk songs in elementary school so I knew all the open chords. I have been a middle school/high school choral director for the past 25 years and haven't played the guitar until few years ago when I decided to learn fingerstyle.

I used justinguitar.com for awhile and worked through the Hansen books mentioned. IMHO, Steve Krenz's Learn and Master Fingerstyle is a good course as he includes multiple styles.

Presently, I am working through Doug Young's Understanding DADGAD for fingerstyle guitar and am also using Tommy Emanual's courses on TrueFire.

[recstar24]

Good to hear rahn. This is my 12th year teaching and like you has been primarily middle school and high school chorus.

I was able to download the pdf for the acoustic guitar method book by David hamburger on the acoustic guitar magazine and shall work my way through it and go from there. My local library I'm sure has some stuff as well.