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Catalog > Books > Guitar updated November 25, 2011
Titles listed in alphabetical order
Fingerstyle Guitar -- 256 pages, by Ken Perlman (published by Hal Leonard) $24.95
Teaches beginning or advanced guitarists how to master the basic musical skills of fingerpicking techniques needed to play folk, blues, fiddle tunes or ragtime on guitar. Recommended by HMT guitar teacher Tom Espinola!
Guitar From Scratch -- 84 pages, by Bruce Emery $16.50
Guitar From Scratch is aimed at the rank beginner. It's all about chords: their individual personalities, the mechanics of playing them, and how they relate to other chords belonging to the same key. After getting the left hand (fretting hand) under control, we turn to the right hand to explore the easiest and most common strumming and fingerpicking patterns. Even if you've been playing for a while, you might want to check out this one. Recommended by HMT guitar teacher Tim Smith!
Music Principles for the Skeptical Guitarist, Volume One: The Big Picture $24.95
63 pages, by Bruce Emery.
Not finding any particularly readable books on guitar music theory for his own students, Bruce Emery decided to write his own. It's all here: how notes become chords, how chords group into keys and how everything comes together in the Circle of Fifths, the cosmic nutshell of the entire musical universe. But he goes easy on you by (1) starting with a general survey, just to get you playing some different chord families, and then (2) returning to the beginning for a more gradual, brick-by-brick approach that culminates in a flash of insight. Dan Miller, publisher of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, calls it "’Δ¶the best presentation on this important theoretical tool I have ever seen."
Music Principles for the Skeptical Guitarist, Volume Two: The Fretboard $24.95
142 pages, by Bruce Emery
Now that you've received a whole new lease on life from having read Volume One, along comes the Volume 2 to help you apply your newfound knowledge on the fretboard itself. If the Circle of Fifths was the star of the first book, the CAGED system dominates the second book. It will help you organize scales and chords into all these handy inter-connected box patterns up and down the neck. We go into chord voicings, chord qualities, quadrads and complex chords. Dan Miller mentions the "slap on the forehead" factor as a frequent response while reading this book. I also spend some time talking about how to put chords to melodies and how to use intervals known as Thirds, Sixths and Tenths. No matter what style of music you play, the CAGED system rules.