- Hal Leonard Guitar Method Book 1: Bk/Online Audio

Before we started piano lessons, we started guitar lessons and quickly discovered that the kiddo was not quite ready for guitar lessons due to short fingers, bit we had purchased this book by recommendation via the guitar teacher and it is a great starter book for learning the guitar. While we are not using at the moment due to switching to piano, we will be using it in the future when kiddo has a little more length to her fingers and ready to get back to learning the guitar.

As a professional guitar instructor, I have been using this book for probably three decades. It’s great for the teacher and for the student as the material is laid out very clear and easy to understand for the students. An industry standard for sure! The play along tracks are a bonus. Highly recommended!🎸

This is the book my music instructor had me use when I was first beginning guitar lessons. My grandson took up guitar and I bought this same book for him. Highly recommend.

This is a good well-rounded book that I found easier to learn with than some other systems such as Mel Bay. This book has been around in one form of another for twenty years or more, so don't expect super modern songs. The focus here is mainly sight reading and a few chords, although there is a full chord chart in the back the book really takes its time addressing more chords. So if strumming is your main emphasis, there may be other books out there that focus on a faster approach for chords. All in all its a good book and hard to beat for beginner guitar. Songs are not too hard but this is not really a self-study course I don't think. Make sure you get the one with the CD, its a must.

Very basic to help beginners to get started playing. Simple to follow and understand. Recommend for anyone starting out and not knowing where to begin. If you know 8-10 chords and can play a few songs, this first one in the series is too basic. There is a progressive series of these books available: 1, 2, 3, etc.

Very helpful guide

I have looked at numerous beginner guitar books, and I currently have about six others that I've checked out from the library, but I keep coming back to this one. I love that there is no TAB in this book. To me, TAB feels like cheating. You have to learn how to read TAB and then you get used to it, and then you feel like you need it. But even books with TAB usually also have the standard music notation written out above to clarify the rhythm, etc. So why not just use the standard notation in the first place instead of learning two systems? And this book, more than any other, taught me how to read music. It's simple. You learn a few notes on one string, and then you practice a few songs that use those notes. Then you move to the next string. There are no shortcuts! If you just steadily work at it, you get to the point fairly quickly where you can look at a note and automatically play it on the right string on the guitar. Yes, the music is basic, and I suppose some of it is boring (I found myself wanting to skip a few like Yankee Doodle), but I actually loved most of the tunes (especially the folk songs). It's helpful to have some idea what a song should sound like so you know if you're on the right track. To me, this is a good book to get if you're willing to put in the time and actually learn to read music. You learn chords too as you go along. But the chords aren't the focus, and I actually liked that. It's easy to get frustrated with learning guitar because a lot of people and books will tell you that all you need to learn is a few chords and then you'll be playing songs in no time. But they don't tell you how hard learning chords, getting them to sound right, switching between them in time, and singing along will be. This book actually gets you playing melodies quickly, and the chords come in time as your fingers toughen up.

NICE BOOK. WELL DONE

I think every beginner who wants to learn a Guitar should have this book. The basics are explained very clearly and also you learn the Notes too. Come's with a disc that has beats to play along with and also has a code inside to download the tracks from their website if you don't have a CD player or anything that runs a disc.

Excellent book. Takes you from the basics to intermediate level in an easy to follow manner.

Alles perfect

Book was in perfect shape and arrived in a timely fashion. Thanks!

Was recommended by my son’s instructor. Does the job.