Your favorite Guitar Instruction Books (or Videos)

[jpfeifer]

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to pass along some of my favorite Guitar Instruction resources that I've found over the years. Lately it seems that the quality of instructional materials has increased. It's pretty easy to find great books on a lot of different aspects to guitar playing these days, but it wasn't always like this.

Here is my list of great guitar books for those who are looking for some "woodsheding" material:

Pat Martino "Linear Expressions" from REH ISBN 0-943686-11-3
If you're looking for a good book to learn some interesting bebop Jazz lines, this is it. Pat Martino introduces a whole concept about soloing by learning how to solo over minor chords only. He covers the whole neck with different exercises and demonstrates how to get very colorful sounds from just the minor flavor of harmony. Next, he shows you how to take these minor chord solo ideas and transpose them to ANY other type of chord (Major, Dominant, etc) by making the right kind of substitution (i.e. Aminor works over Cmaj7 chords, etc) I highly reccomend this book. I'm still working out of this one.

Jazz Guitar Single Note Soloing - Vol. 1 and 2 by Ted Greene
These books can be hard to find but they are a gold mine. If ever I had about 2 years to do nothing but practice guitar everyday (which I don't), then I would use these books. Ted Greene was a teacher in LA for many years and taught some of the great session players through the years such as Steve Lukather, Jay Graydon, and many others. His books cover almost every aspect to soloing over changes that you will find anywhere. This guy is a genius and it shows in his books. Unfortunately Ted Greene passed away just last year.

Jazz Licks by David Peterson ISBN 0-8258-4555-6
This is a very inexpensive book that covers a lot very useful examples of standard Jazz Guitar licks for most of the common chord types. If you're just getting into Jazz and want to learn a few useful lines to play over various chord types, this is an exellent book for learning that. It even comes with a CD so that you can hear the examples.

-- Jim

[marnold***]

Two words: Metal Method

[r_a_smith3530]

For the low enders out there, I would recommend "Bass Guitar for Dummies" (yes, it's really a good book) and Guitar School's "Bass Fitness" bass exercise handbook.

[marnold***]

I'd also add an old CD-ROM called "Teach Me Blues Guitar." Lots of good stuff in there for aspiring bluesmen.

[Justaguyin_nc]

Hey Marnold I got that one...by Voyetra.. pretty nice.. I lost interest in it when I found I could not get the tabs off it.. or figure how to... but the parts in the videos playing with the band lead or rythm was kinda neat..

I also have about 4 -5 books from the Jam Trax series by Ralph Argresta which have good backings and have become helpfull mixing Majors and Minors together..
Chicago Blues, Blues, More Blues, Modern Blues... all good and different.

[Katastrophe]

"The Mel Bay Encyclopedia of Guitar Chords" is a great reference book.

Then there is the first book that I used to learn my first chords... "The Roy Clark Guitar Method." Very helpful...