What is the best book to self-learn the guitar?

5 responses so far ↓

• 1 FutureBillionaire // Nov 10, 2008

  lessons are well worth it…however there are many websites such as http://www.ultimate-guitar.com which have tabs, tons of lessons, and help from other users. Good luck

• 2 Charlie // Nov 10, 2008

  Well, learning by book is the hardest way to learn an instrument. You should get lessons.

  BUT if you must, my favorite is The Ultimate Guitar Handbook by Ralph Denyer. It will show you scales, music theory, and basic licks. It will also show you how to maintain and fix your guitar. It has saved my life at least twice.

  To actually learn guitar well, though, you need to find tabs for songs that you like and learn them. The more songs that you learn to play, the better you will play.

  If you are just starting out, the beginners song books w/ CD's are great. These books have a "dumbed down" version of several popular songs and are very easy to play and start learning on. The audio CD is super helpful: it will get you acquainted with different rhythms and licks in time. The CD's often contain a back-track for you to play over if you so wished.

  I honestly recommend going to your local guitar or music store and asking the employees if they give lessons or know/can suggest anyone who can.

  Unless you know another instrument already, they can help you with your scales, music theory, soloing, and composition, among many other skills, that you either can't or will have difficulty learning from a book.

  There is more to just putting your fingers on the right frets at the right time. You need to understand what you are doing musically in order to play well.

  Lessons, from most teachers, will run you about $20 for a half hour, once a week (which is more than enough time). Some teachers will charge less (around $12) and some will charge you WAY more (professional lessons can set you back over $300 an hour), but a good ear mark is $18-22 a half hour.

  I hope this helps you and anyone else who might have the same question.

• 3 Alex Z // Nov 10, 2008

  See this list of guitar books having the most helpful reviews on Amazon.com, it will save you time as you narrow your search for a good book for your needs:

  http://pickii.com/c/guitar/

  Disclosure: I helped create Pickii.com am thus biased, but it was meant to solve exactly this kind of problem.

• 4 Alice Lockwood // Nov 10, 2008

  http://www.learnandmasterguitar.com

• 5 Jason R // Nov 10, 2008

  If you are serious abotu learning it by yourself I HIGHLY recommend the master the guitar DVD set. It is the only home course I can recommend. I am an advanced guitarist with a foundation degree in guitar music practice and a foundation degree in music. You can make some headway with general books on music etc, but mostly these will only teach you songs, and a few scales. There is A HELL of a lot more to it than that. If you want to learn to play lead guitar, solo etc…I highly recommend that DVD course.

  If you really, only want a book then the only one I can suggest from personal experience is the ‘Rock School’ books or in general, anything that goes by grades.

  When you start to find yourself learning modes and hormonized scales you know that your on the right learning path.