 From Turkey with love! |
| Review Date: February 18, 2010 |
| Reviewer: A. Erdal Turker, Istanbul/TURKEY |
Dear people of the WORLD,
I am making this announcement from Istanbul /TURKEY. I am 63 years old. My second child is a 24 years old boy. He is playing since 5-6 years a bass guitar. They have a music group and preparing an English music album in Progressive Metal Music. I have a friend who is also playing bass guitar since 25 years. I asked him if it possible to find any book about guitars. He answered without thinking: "You should have The Guitar Handbook".
Then I searced in internet and found this great book in "Amazon World".
Now my boy is very happy and I am also very happy as his father because of his happiness.
Thank you very much Dear Amazon!!!
Best regards to everybody who has read this announcement...
Erdal Turker
erdal_turker@yahoo.com |
This is how I taught myself guitar
|
| Review Date: February 11, 2010 |
| Reviewer: T. Mahoney, Los Angeles |
I bought this book about 15 years ago after I bought a Fender Squire strat off a friend, who provided me with the guitar and a couple of sheets of paper with handwritten instructions on playing a few scales and power chords. I bought this book next, and it's the only book I needed to learn not just about playing guitar -- including scales, chords, and some theory -- but also about guitars themselves, including effects, recording, and some insight from great players (many who I admit are kind of cheesy, especially in retrospect).
If you are an autodidact with drive, this book is all you'll ever need. If I could give it six stars, I would. |
The Book's Title Should Be: "The Guitarist's Encyclopedia"
|
| Review Date: January 14, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Brother MOLOCH 969, Cleveland, Ohio |
Ever wanted a book that will teach you about guitars & all there is to know about them? Well this book comes VERY close to doing just that!
I've used this book a lot over the years because it's THAT good! I bought it back in the early 1990's because it covered so much ground that I scarcely had to bother with much else. I mean if you are tight on cash, then seriously consider buying this book & here's why:
My copy started you off with some guitar innovators from blues to jazz to rock. I'd never heard of Django Reinhardt before & after reading about him, I was impressed that the man could play circles around most guitarists out there by only use 2 fingers of his left hand! I also learned about Charlie Christian who played with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Also I learned about some nut named Frank Zappa who despite all his weirdness, was a phenomenal musical talent which immediately raised my respect for him.
That was just the first part of the book!
THEN we get into the "Anatomy of the Guitar" and here I learned about solid bodies versus hollow bodies versus semi-hollow bodies & why each is made the way they are. This helped to give me a better understanding of guitars & what to look for with my own playing style.
Then we get into theory. Yeah, yeah I know ugh theory BUT the way Denyers lays it out, I learned a whole lot more than when I was sitting & listening to "Bob" my guitar instructor drone on about it. The section on Intervals is exceptional & worth the price of the book alone.
He goes into picks & gauges, finger picking versus flat picking, 3 chord theory, barre chords, transposing songs, how to use a capo, time values & time signatures, rhythms (rock, blues, soul, funk, country, reggae, & more). He then takes you into jazz styles explaining the Major scale to you & why it's important (& it is because it is the MOTHER of all scales.) Then he talks to you about Minor scales which are used a lot in Rock & Metal & some C&W songs. Then you're introduced to scales & modes (some refer to these as Church scales) and he shows you on a fretboard HOW to play them instead of just yakking about them.
There's a ton of material for you to pick & choose fro4m in the theory section & believe you me, TRY it all because you'll learn some new stuff & eventually find a use for it in your repertoire. Hell it may be only to show off to that jerk whose great at finger tapping but you can show him all he knows is a trick while you have real chops!
Finally we move into info about guitar setup & maintenance and amps & their maintenance. What tools do you need to have on hand & why. HOW to adjust (minor) things like string height, cleaning & string replacement. You'll get an education on the humbuckers versus single coils & which may be better for the sound you're looking for.
Last but not least, there's a great chord dictionary in the back that I just fell in love with. You're shown HOW to play each chord in three separate locations on the neck. Everything from barre chords to open chords & even polychords. You'll learn majors, minors, augmented, diminished, suspended, 6ths, 7ths, & so on.
I really think this should be called an encyclopedia of guitar because it covers sooooo much ground & what's really nice is it's in color! That makes learning much more fun & easier since your mind can correlate abstract concepts with colors better.
Overall I rate this 5 out of 5 stars for utter completeness & full clarity. It's not perfect but it's damn close in my opinion! |
This Book ROCKS!
|
| Review Date: May 27, 2009 |
| Reviewer: B. Scalise, West Covina, CA USA |
I love this book. I wanted a book that covered all aspects of guitar playing, from the basics, through to advanced theory and technique, chords with progressions, scales, soloing, various picking techniques, tips, tricks, along with practical guides to guitar maintenance, etc. Basically a "guitar encyclopedia." This book is it. It has all that plus a nice history of the guitar and a treatise of notable rock guitar players. From early blues and jazz through the years when rock guitarists were gods. My one niggle is, I think it would be nice if they broadened the scope of the book from just rock into classical, flamengo, etc. But its an insignificant nit, and detracts from this wonderful book not at all.
If you only want to buy one guitar book, buy this one. |
Best Guitar Book,...EVER!!
|
| Review Date: May 10, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Norman L. Shull, |
| Ive been playing guitar off and on since I was 12. Until I started to play bar cords did I actually learn anything, that was when I was 18. Now, Im not an amazing guitarist by any means. As a matter of fact, I pick up the guitar to play about 2 or 3 times a month, just for fun. But the thing I love about this book is that it takes you through bar cords, diads, majors, minors, tabs. It gives you exercises for rythym, leads. It takes you through what harmonics are,..and this is what helped me more than anything. If your guitar is not set harmonically correct, you might as well play a ukulele. Seriously. I wish I had had more information, which this book is thoroughly and most comprehensibly filled with. I cannot, literally, expound on the amount of amazing information in this book, and have seen many guitarists,...names "weve" heard of,...say that this is THE guitar book to own. This is the 3rd time I have bought this exact same book. Does that tell you anything?? |
|
Mon, Jul 6, 2009
Reviews