How To Play Guitar: A Complete Guide for Absolute Beginners - Level 1

Firstly, let me say I have been playing guitar for 20 years.I bought this book for my daughter as a supplement for learning guitar tabulature and theory side by side. As you can see in the picture I have attached, the tabs are wrong. WAY OFF. If you pick up a guitar and play the tabs in this book, it sounds AWFUL because the transposition of the fret placement is utter garbage.Sure, it will teach the basics of guitar to an extent, but my daughter was IN TEARS because she couldn't figure out why her songs sounded so bad, even though she did everything right that the book told her to.Please do not purchase this for someone you care about. It can be VERY DISHEARTENING to try to learn a new instrument and feel like you are lost, all because of errors coming from the source you trust to teach you correctly.Needless to say, I have returned the book, and I do not intend to make further purchases from this publisher.

Easy to read book with great pictures and scales. I played sax in middle and high school but it has been years since I have played music. Decided to try to play guitar and this book made it easy to pick up. I was playing simple little songs like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the first day! It's the little things that excite me! The author explains how to read music in addition to how to learn the notes very well.

I've been teaching guitar for over 30 years and this is by far the best guitar method book that I've found for teaching teens and adults! From beginning to end it is well written with plenty of chord charts, easy to play songs and most importantly a step-by-step approach to teaching beginners how to read guitar music. Book includes both standard music notation and guitar tablature (Tab).  How To Play Guitar: A Complete Guide For Absolute Beginners - Level 1

I'm just beginning to learn and though I'm only on the 3'rd exercise and first real tune, I am enjoying the experience. Simply written and easy to follow. Practice is the only way to get good at music and the lessons are easy and fun to practice. Highly recommended for any guitar student just beginning.

This is a basic guide that's good enough for an absolute beginner like me. It seems like it should be adequate to provide the basic guitar playing foundation that I will need to build on later, as I advance. The guide contains some beginner info on reading sheet music and tabs and includes a few easy to learn tunes to get used to finger placement and strumming technique.

There just wasn't enough information for a biginner. Showing scales is not helpful more pictures and closer images of the guitar and fingering would have been better.

Good beginner guide to guitar. Lots of better free options online such as justin guitar

A useful starting point for the novice player, as indicated. The only problem occurs when trying to read it on a Kindle, as the musical notation is much too small.

If you look at my image above, taken from Page 17 of this book, as ordered from Amazon, you can see that the guitar tab says " 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 2 2 0 0 3 3 0". This is just wrong. Assuming the strings and starting note are otherwise correctly written (and who can really say?! ), this should say "0 0 3 3 0 0 3 1 1 0 0 2 2 0". This is not an isolated example -- the examples shown throughout the book are repeatedly inaccurate. This quite shocking for a pro book that you can find all over the internet. Note that the music written on the treble clef above the tab IS accurate, which also means that the two don't match. Nice quality control by, erm, no one!Don't buy this. It's teaching your kids wrong and you will be not be able to achieve results and play the songs shown by following this book. Shocking that this got out like actually. Editors? Author? What are you playing at?!

I bought this book to help me teach my granddaughter the guitar. She already plays the trombone and bassoon to a good standard. She immediately pointed out that the tablature diagrams are totally wrong: it indicates the wrong notes. This book is totally useless.

I brought this book for my daughter about a year ago. Today I decided it was time I brushed up on my guitar skills to play with her. Working my way through this book it became immediately apparent that the tabs are just wrong. It has a lot of helpful information about playing guitar but the songs are unplayable as written. I'm currently rewriting the tabs in the book for my daughter. If I had noticed this when I first bought the book I would have returned it.

I chose this because I really thought it would be a help to me during my guitar learning process.To be honest its utter garbage!Yes it covers many topics but falls way short of explaining them and indeed helping you play in any form or shape.If I could give it a zero rating I would.If there were any way of me getting my money back I would.Don't bother !!!

Just what i needed to introduce me to the world of guitar playing. Nothing too drastic in terms of jumping from one exercise to the other.