The Best Guitar Books
Here is a list of some of the educational materials that have helped me the most in my journey with the guitar.
In this book by Jamie Andreas, you will find a comprehensive approach to how to practice the guitar.
Jamie hones in on several extremely key components of guitar playing: paying attention to unnecessary tension in the entire body while playing; the importance of practicing extremely slowly when first learning a new move; how to bring laser-focused attention to your practicing; and her powerful Basic Practice Approach that ties it all together and helps insure rapid, continual progress.
An absolutely indispensable book for every guitarist.
Also by Jamie Andreas.
If you get through The Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar and find yourself wanting more, this book will scratch your itch. Jamie elaborates on the foundation of her first book and includes a slew of extremely powerful practicing methods that will help you make mincemeat of any difficult musical passage you encounter.
Not quite as indispensable as The Principles, but well worth studying nonetheless.
This is an extremely underground book by Michael Hoffman, and I have no idea why more guitarists don’t sing this book’s praises.
About 10 years ago, as I was trying to wrap my head around how music theory worked as applied to the guitar fretboard, I ran across the seriousguitar.com website and decided to give the book a shot. When it arrived, I started moving through the start of the book and discovered an unbelievable wellspring of effective exercises designed to get the reader to master music theory as it applies to the guitar.
Serious Guitar is by no means light-hearted, and it isn’t for the faint of heart either, but if you are genuinely driven to know your guitar inside and out, then you will definitely benefit from diving headlong into this mighty manual for the guitar.
By Billy Newman
I studied with Billy in Brooklyn for a couple years. We used this book as the foundation of our exploration of Brazilian guitar music. Use this one as a springboard into the Brazilian repertoire–it’ll help you get a feel for many of the primary Brazilian rhythms and guitar techniques.
By Ted Greene
This bible of chords, chord theory and comprehensive coverage of all things chord-based on the guitar has been devoured and implemented by guitarists since its publication in the 1970′s.
Simply put, if you want to expand your knowledge of chords and chord progressions on the guitar, then this book will carry you as far as you want to go and much, much further.
I refer to this book frequently for songwriting ideas and to deepen my understanding of the guitar. Highly recommended. And, if you connect with Ted Greene’s approach, then www.tedgreene.com contains a wealth of Ted’s lessons in PDF format. It’s a veritable treasure trove of great stuff including arrangements of many famous tunes in Ted Greene’s inimitable style.
If you’re ever in a situation where a bunch of people are gathered and ready to sing but need a little structure, then Rise Up Singing just might be your Holy Grail.
This book, originally compiled in 1988, contains a huge array of songs that span from traditional tunes to well-known folk numbers from the 1960′s and 70′s.
While the song selection skews a little to the old side (there are plenty of songs in Rise Up Singing that I’ve never even heard of), the book is still an incredibly useful tool to have on hand. Instead of finding yourself in a group without a clear musical direction, Rise Up Singing will always give you some great options.
A must-have for the social musician.
