Guitar All-in-One For Dummies®

by Jon Chappell

Your comprehensive, hands-on guide to playing guitar

Have you always wanted to play the guitar? You can start today with these 8 minibooks. Covering both acoustic and electric guitar, this hands-on resource gives you all the instruction you need to play across multiple genres, whether you're a beginner or an experienced guitarist. You'll find plenty of tips for playing easier and more complex pieces — and for composing your own. Plus, you can play along with examples on the bonus CD!

Gear up to start playing — understand the different parts of a guitar, find the right guitar for you, string and tune the instrument, and develop basic playing skills

Immerse yourself in sounds and technique — play major and minor chords, master left- and right-hand techniques, and play melodies in position and double-stops

Get ready to rock! — from Chuck Berry to Keith Richards to The Edge, see how the best play barre chords, hot licks, and sweet leads

Play the blues — explore rhythm and lead techniques, signature riffs, blues progressions, and the achievements of great blues guitarists

Go classical — learn about the history of classical guitar, combine arpeggios and melody, and sample different genres

Practice, practice, practice — try your hand at major scales, minor scales, and chord exercises to rev up stalled skills

Write songs and music — check out different song forms, understand modes, and compose with chords

Open the book and find:

Plenty of music examples and practice exercises

Musical styles and genres through the years

Correct hand position and posture

Basic playing techniques

Standard music notation and tablature

Tips for playing up the neck

Ways to solo and improvise leads

Different fingerstyles to play

Accessories for your guitar

A comprehensive guitar chord chart

Bonus CD Includes

More than 90 tracks all played by the authors

Songs from different guitar genres

Examples of chord progressions, riffs, and more

Major and minor scale patterns

Note: The Kindle edition of this book does not include any CDs or DVDs.

Genres: Music, Reference, Nonfiction, Education

696 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Spike Gomes · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is pretty much what it says on the cover. Eight "For Dummies" books in one. Obviously, quite a bit of editing and condensing went into making what was originally over 2,000 pages into a single tome of 650 pages. The result is a book that tries to be everything at once, but doesn't really accomplish it. That's not to say that it's useless. It's more like that it's supplemental to other works, simply too much information has been cut out in order to make it all fit. The practice matter will jump from something extremely basic to something very technical very quickly. Moreover, It just seems really random. A reader looking for info on classical guitar playing is not likely to really be all that interested in rock guitar or blues guitar, and vice versa. It seems like it would have been far more germane to simply have this as a "Four in one" book, where the basic "Guitar for Dummies", "Guitar Exercises for Dummies", "Music Theory for Dummies" and "Music Composition for Dummies" were united into a more contiguous whole, leaving out the far more specific genre books, and the oddball "Songwriting for Dummies" as separate editions to buy for people wanting to go in that direction. That said, I'm glad I got the book. 2.5 out of 5 stars.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this doesn't make total sense as a unified book, it's still pretty good.

If you want to play guitar and don't know where to start, or you already play but are a relative beginner, this book has a lot of helpful content to select an instrument, understand different genres, learn music theory, and get some bits of technique.

For anyone else, I think the theory section is really well-written, one of the better treatments I've seen. So the individual Guitar Theory for Dummies or another of Desi Serna's books might be worth looking into instead. Otherwise, there are better books covering most of the other topics in this all-in-one.

Also, this isn't a workbook or a method book, so regardless of who you are, it's a good idea to read something that's more focused on exercises too.

[Jamesjohn Jamesjohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Covers a lot of ground. Guitars and styles have a lot of variety, and the author does a good job of covering them. It's a bit dated about tuners and such, with the light tone and corny jokes sometimes getting in the way of the important material, but this still remains a good For Dummies starter reference and practice guide for this wide-ranging instrument.

[Karl GT · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book really does what it advertises; I'm a dummy wanting to learn guitar, and did in fact learn things reading this book.