The Ultimate Guitar Compendium

[Azrael]

Hello fellow guitarists!

As you know there is a vast amount of guitar-teaching books out there, more than one of them claiming to be THE ultimate tome of wisdom. Well.. if there was THE ultimate tome of wisdom, then there would be no need for hundreds and thousands of books, right?

Anyway - i'd like to hear from you guys:

What are your personal experiences with instructional guitar books?
Which one(s) do you ypersonaly like best and why?
What were you missing in those books?
What did you expect from those books?
Did they meet your expectations?

Imagine you will write the ultimate book - what would you put in it? What would you like to read in THE ultimate book?

Looking forward to your thoughts

Azrael

[Akira]

Hello fellow guitarists!

As you know there is a vast amount of guitar-teaching books out there, more than one of them claiming to be THE ultimate tome of wisdom. Well.. if there was THE ultimate tome of wisdom, then there would be no need for hundreds and thousands of books, right?

Anyway - i'd like to hear from you guys:

What are your personal experiences with instructional guitar books?
Which one(s) do you ypersonaly like best and why?
What were you missing in those books?
What did you expect from those books?
Did they meet your expectations?

Imagine you will write the ultimate book - what would you put in it? What would you like to read in THE ultimate book?

Looking forward to your thoughts

Azrael

I actually prefer books as opposed to online lessons.

Books I've had good experience with were: "The Complete Guitarist", by Richard Chapman, "Chord Chemisty", by Ted Greene, and "Guitar Secrets", by Joe Satriani.

The Complete Guitarist covers just about everything, it really does, however it could have included more on techniques, I think if it did, it probably would be the ultimate book.

Chord Chemistry is about, well, chords, and it's insane. The amount of chords in the book runs in to the thousands, yet there is a large section of the book dedicated to using these chords and applying them, which is really useful. I guess I would have liked to have seen a bit more organisation in this book though.

Guitar Secrets revolves around a number of theoretical and technique based "secrets" from Joe Satriani, infact the book is a collection of some articles he wrote for a magazine in the early 90's. I would have liked to have seen more content in the book though, with Joe Satriani maybe having written some new articles just for the book.

The hard thing about making the "ultimate" book I guess would be the fact that guitar isn't for an end product, where as most peoples expectations of a book are that it'll take them from A to B and when they get to B they'll suddenly be a great guitarist/musician.

I guess "you only get out what you put in" comes in to play as well; I think a book is only as good as the persons ability to use it and apply its concepts properly.

P.S. A really great book would be one based purely on song analysis, I think that'd be pretty sweet.

[earthman buck]

I have a book called "Totally Guitar: the definitive guide" by Tony Bacon and Dave Hunter which I find to be awesome. It has an introductory section about the basic history of the guitar, a section with some easy lessons, a section that tells you how to change strings, set intonation, remove pickups, etc., a section about effects pedals and how they work, and a section with pictures of all different makes of guitar from just about every company you can think of it.

It truly is a great book. If you could combine something like that with some harder lessons, you'd have one helluva book.

[ren]

Books I'd rate:

Like Akira - Chord Chemistry and Satch's secrets, for more or less the same reasons. Any book without can be improved with a CD of examples etc. When I first got the satch book I wasn't in a position to imagine what hitting a harmonic with the bar dipped before raising 6 tones, down 2, up 1 and so on - with the audio I'd have stood a better chance.

Maybe random, but another fav of mine is 'Talking Wood' by Andy Manson (UK Luthier for those who don't know). It's more a diary of his life including building a crazy multi-necked guitar/mandolin/thing for John Bonham. All very inetresting - bits on building guitars, bits on playing, love of guitar in general, him playing gigs and then just a Joe waking up and getting on with his day. No idea why it appeals, but it does.

For me now, no book matches my expectation because it will inevitably raise questions it doesn't answer.

The ultimate guitar book would I guess have to include absolutely everything. The basics I guess would be a grade 8 type syllabus for scales / chords / theory etc. For example, this (http://www.registryofguitartutors.com/exams/downloads/ElectricGuitarBooklet2006.pdf) (a 4mb pdf, so only click if you want that!).

After that it would have to break down technique. Legato, Alt/Economy/Hybrid picking, fingerstyle, tapping (up to 8 fingers), sweeping, acoustic stuff (percussive bits perhaps?), muting technique in different situations. The inevitable speed building etc. Diatonic Harmony at least and then maybe onward.

I guess that book would be pretty heavy. Might have to be split into 'foundation' and then style specific modules. I guess as I believe I'll never stop learning, I'd also have to believe that no book could contain all the information...

I guess that didn't help at all...

[Gargy]

Imagine you will write the ultimate book - what would you put in it? What would you like to read in THE ultimate book?

Azrael

The ultimate 'book' for me would be more a book on tape (EDIT: Or CD... this is the 2000's); I'm one of those rare people who learns things better from hearing them than seeing them (I have passed college courses without taking a single note on paper or reading the text before). If I were making it, I'd start with basic scales (the major scale in the open position, etc.) then move on to simple chords, barre chords, etc. Of course I'd have a booklet to go along with it (since its hard to explain what a barre chord is with spoken words alone).

As far as books I've owned, I've only had one and that was a book demystifing the penatonic scale and it's various shapes and positions. Everything else I've looked at was pure garbage (mostly because I'm an audio-based learner so it isn't neccesarily the book's fault).

Now that I think of it, I also have had mixed success with artist songbooks (I know they aren't really 'instructiona' per-se but hear me out). I learned more from a single Metallica Book and an instructor's assistance than I learned from any other book, magazine, or course that I've ever encountered. I remember he even got us started on Van Halen's Eruption before I had to cancel my lessons to move half-way across the country again *grumble*

[hunter1801]

The ultimate 'book' for me would be more a book on tape (EDIT: Or CD... this is the 2000's)

Tape?! What the heck is that? I think I remember reading about something called a "tape" in a History book. :p

[Gargy]

Tape?! What the heck is that? I think I remember reading about something called a "tape" in a History book. :p

Some of us from the 1980s and 1990s have used them back before CDs really caught on (And of course this was all LONG before we had these new-fangled MP3s)

EDIT: I remember back when cars actually came with only tape decks (Actually, a Ford Taurus I rented in 2004 had only a tape deck, but it must've been an older model)