How To Play Guitar: A Complete Guide for Absolute Beginners - Level 1 Paperback – 20 Aug. 2012

I bought this book along with Beginner's Guitar Lessons - The essential guide by Joseph Alexander, as I simply didn't have any idea as to what kind of book would suit me as a complete beginner. Both books turned out to be very helpful for me to get to understand the very basic of guitar playing. But this book by Ben Parker was easier to understand when it came to chord learning from scratch. I was classically trained in piano, so at least I didn't have to worry about reading musical notes. I just needed to understand how to produce a right note/chords using these 6 strings on fret board and this book has provided a photo of the fret board with a finger pressing on the right string coupled with some easy exercise score to practice. The illustration was easy to understand and clear. With Beginner's Guitar lessons by Joseph Alexander, the content has more detailed explanation such as how to hold a guitar and use a plectrum in the correct way, which Ben Parker's book did not elaborate much in great details. Once I got through the most of the pages in Ben Parker's book, it was a lot easier for me to go through the lessons in this book by Joseph Alexander and got more knowledge out of the book, as it has lot more convoluted information such as splitting the chord and descending bass lines. At the end page of both books, there are dictionary of useful chords. I find the book by Ben Parker better and easier to get into, which has a comprehensive list of chords by type ( Major, Minor and 7th chords). Once you have learned the most common chords through the books, you can always refer back to this list of chords to check your progress in remembering them and build more knowledge from there. I was so worried that I would never ever master learning chords in the first week I have started, but now I have learned most of the common chords in these books and I can move on to the next step. I think learning a new instrument requires a great amount of perseverance and enthusiasm, which does help the learner to cope with crossing over difficult hurdles especially if they are very tough hurdles !

I found this pretty useful just to get up and running with some basic chords and notes. It seems more orientated towards someone who is used to playing classically rather than purely learning the guitar. Eg it teaches you how to read music as well as from a simple tab, and also teaches you scales. This was useful for me as I want to be able to pick out notes and sight read other pieces of music as well as learning chords. This book also has a simple chord dictionary at the end which I have found really useful.

I'm taking music as a GCSE option in school, and almost everyone can play an instrument, but me! I know a lot about music already, and how to tune a guitar, and how to play a few songs, but I didn't know enough to actually play the guitar… Every module, we have to perform a solo, and I usually sing or play piano, but I don't actually get lessons on either, so I don't excel in either. And I always wanted to learn guitar, and have one to practice at home, but I could never get lessons, but because of the post 16 music students and the awesome guitar teacher, I learnt quite a bit, and my mum surprised me and got me an acoustic guitar for christmas and this book! Everyone I spoke to advised me to learn 3 or 4 chords, and then learn to switch between them quickly, to a strumming beat, and eventually you'll pick it up.What I found very useful is at the back of the books there are 3 pages that have the major, minor and seventh chords! So I've mostly been looking at the chords and tried them on my guitar, then tried switching between them. I haven't really read the start of the book because it tells you how to tune the guitar, how to hold it, how to hold a pick/plectrum and use it, and well because of my knowledge, I already knew this stuff, but if you don't I recommend getting this book! Because it does start with the very basics, and gives you a few short music lessons and simple string exercises. After the book covers the basics, it goes on to show you how to put your knowledge to use, and it has the sheet music for simple sings like Twinkle Twinkle little star, and Mary had a little lamb :) These songs are obviously easy, but it gets you used to the fret board, and practises you to move your fingers quicker!

It's OK, but at times basic information is not clearly presented or simply missing. For example, Mr. Parker will present Yankee Doodle on a music clef, and then on a guitar tab - without presenting the basic EGBDF and FACE music clef in tab. I had to look up elsewhere and lose an hour trying to find these tab diagrams which really belong in here, and eventually drew it myself from different sources with a ruler and pencil so I could play a basic semi chromatic scale (that's ABCDEFG notes, I think) from tab, before moving onto the mega-challenging yankee doodle. Simple stuff like moving 2 frets is a whole tone, but a single fret is a semitone, is absent from this. It is "good enough" but you'll want to scan around and improvise a lot to really get to the know strings as part of this.

My hubbie bought me a guitar for xmas last year but I've never quite got around to learning it properly - so it finally felt liek time. cought a couple of beginners books and this one was great, nice and simple and easy to follow. It's ages since I read musci so I liked being able to follow the TAB diagrams, but it's also re-teaching me to read music properly as well, so best of both worlds. Good wee book !

Bought this for my daughter as a part of her Christmas as she wants to learn the guitar she seems to be doing quite well but not quite at doing a song yet but is a good book with good clear instructions perfect for a beginner

Very quick delivery and was in good condition. Also i am trying to learn guitar and this book helped immensely which i was very pleased with. It will teach you the basic nursery rhymes and then expand that knowledge onto more complex pieces. I would recommend this book to anyone trying to learn guitar.