10-Minute Acoustic Guitar Workout (Book and CD) (Book and CD)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 144 pages
• Published by: Sanctuary February 1, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1846094976
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1846094972
• Book Dimensions: 11.8 x 8.9 x 0.4 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

Reader Reviews
This book has such great advice for a beginning guitarist. I am new to guitar playing - well, I tried to learn ten years ago and never got beyond the basic A/C/G chord shapes. Below are some of the gems I've discovered in this book: 1. Deal with fingering difficulties immediately, rather than ignoring them and hoping they'll get better as time goes by. 2. Practice my barre without chord shapes, once the barre is strong, then I can add the shapes. I can't tell you how discouraged I was by barre chords, and I think breaking them down like this would have helped me tremendously ten years ago. 3. Exactly where my left fingers should be touching the strings - close to the frets, on the tips, not fleshy pads. 4. Break down songs into 4 bar segments, rather than try to plow through the whole thing at once, and be prepared to spend a long time learning a song. 5. How to set up an effective practice routine. I guess these are pretty basic things a good guitar teacher would have taught me, but I had 3 guitar teachers (briefly, but still) in the late 1980s and still managed to miss these insights. The book also has lots of information about chord arrangements and scales, and the importance of training your ear to recognize major & minor chords and the intervals that make up the major scale. But my favorite part is the actual workout, which consists of 5 charts. Each chart has 5 exercises (warm-up, arpeggio, scale, chromatic exercise, harmonized scale) with 12 different levels. I am just a D+ on Chart 1, and I can already see the difference. There is a CD that contains the workouts, played at a slow tempo and a regular tempo. Actually, I take that back. I think my favorite part about this book is how the author really addresses concerns and thoughts a beginning guitarist (like me!) has. He clearly has a lot of experience teaching, and it really shows. I'm just not sure why this book is billed as a "fast track" to learning acoustic guitar, unless it is because most other tracks are filled with inefficiencies and bad habits that could hinder a budding guitarist. There is no shortcut to actually practicing your guitar, alot! I don't think you can just do this workout and expect yourself to learn to play guitar - you'll need to work on songs and practice every day. Well anyway, that's a small quibble, I paid full price for this book at my book store and it was well worth it. Comment | | (Report this)