(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best guitar books

Okay so for teaching yourself music theory I believe this was the book I used https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Theory-Complete-Spiral-Bound-Book/dp/0882842250 although I can't find my copy to be %100 sure. It was super cut and dry so maybe boring but I think of music theory as like a sudoku puzzle and find it fun. Basically this should teach you basic stuff like the major and minor keys and how chords are built. Learning the fundamentals is super important to really understanding theory in a meaningful way.

Once you get the fundamentals down learning roman numeral analysis will help you understand how songs are built and why chords work the way they do. For example in Casey Jones I know that the D major chord is V/V which is called a secondary dominant which means that it is acting like a dominant V chord pulling to G so I know when soloing on it that the F# in that D major chord is super important because it is the 7th or G major and especially since F# isn't in the key of C it is a note that causes a lot of tension and is just begging to be resolved up a half-step to G. Now none of that probably made sense but its just to show why learning the roman numeral analysis of Bach and Mozart can be helpful to understanding the Grateful Dead.

Learning Roman Numeral analysis on your own maybe tricky so like I said in my other comment if you can take a music theory class as an elective at your school that would be best. If you can't though, you could just buy the textbook yourself like Clendinning/Marvin's Musician's Guide to Theory and Analysis or look through this thread for suggestions https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/pse4l/beginners_resources_for_the_sidebar/?st=jf744ciz&sh=fe9dd4bd .
There are a lot of videos out there such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICDPWP6HUbk&list=PLw9t0oA3fHkxx1PgYpiXrMUPXaOiwh6KU but you have to poke around YouTube to find ones that work for you.

And than for applying this stuff to guitar you'll want to learn all the notes on the guitar. To do this sight reading whatever you can get your hands on (I go to my local music store and buy flute music), classical guitar music, jazz or folk tunes, or just googling sheet music for whatever songs you want to learn and playing this music in different areas of the guitar. Even sight reading a simple melody can be hard in the 9th position if you aren't used to it. If you are having trouble learning treble clef pick up one of the Mel Bay guitar books https://www.amazon.com/Mel-Bays-Modern-Guitar-Method/dp/0871663546 .
Another good way to learn the notes on the guitar is to play scales and arpeggios in all positions and than say each note out loud as you are playing it. Obviously you will first need to learn your scales and arpeggios but once you do play them on guitar or to make that work book I recommended less boring play your guitar as you go through it.

And lastly the most practical thing you are looking for is a Chord-Scale relationship book like this one https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Chord-Relationships-Knowing-Educational/dp/0634019945 I've never owned this book but it looks alright and any chord-scale theory book should help you.
Chord-Scale theory is basically like "on this chord you play this scale" and it's a terrible way to learn jazz and in general it over simplifies everything and I hate it lol buuutttt I do think it will help you with Grateful Dead stuff. It's just very surface level stuff so I'm putting it last to hopefully encourage you to still learn the more boring classical stuff, because it will pay off in the long run to learn how analyze a Mozart piece. However, if you just kinda wanna start getting into it I think a Chord-Scale Theory book will help you out the most quickly.

Also musictheory.net is a good website to check out to help with this stuff. Good luck and let me know if you have any questions!

One important thing is to relax, and especially relax your fretting hand. If you've got the strings in a death claw, it's going to sound bad and you might eventually wind up with carpal tunnel.

Instead of trying to do hammer-ons right away, force yourself to go back to fundamentals. Set the metronome (you must have a metronome) to 40 beats per minute and play one finger per fret. Your fingers should fall immediately behind each fret. Whole notes, half notes, quarters, eighths triplets and 16ths...make sure you're playing in time with the clicks. Try to relax completely and use only the minimum amount of pressure it takes to sound each note without buzzing. The idea behind this exercise is to teach your muscle memory the exact amount of pressure you need to play a given note. Forcing yourself to play slow will give your muscles time to readjust in order to sound the notes accurately. Your fingers, wrists, body posture, etc. should be completely relaxed and comfortable throughout. If you start tensing up or feel pain or burning in your fingers, make yourself relax and loosen up.

Couple other popular hand exercises.

1. The Soft Touch. Play exactly as above, only leave your fingers on the frets until each finger is ready to move up to the next string. Example: you play index A on the E string, middle finger A#, ring finger B, pinkie B#, keeping each finger in fret position. Now leaving your mf, ring and pinkie down on those frets, pick up your index and move it to D on the A string. Then pick up your mf and move it to play D#, ring to E, pinkie to F and hold. Then continue up the D and G strings the same way. It might help to start higher up on the neck, like C on the E string. Throughout this exercise, the most important thing is that you relax your hand. There should be no pain, no strain, no bizarre wrist angles. Just smooth, slow, relaxed and locked in to the 40 bpm pulse.
   
   
2. The Spider. Purpose of this exercise is to learn independent control of index/ring fingers and middle/pinkie fingers. Play A on the E string with your index, then E on the A string with your ring finger. Then A# on the E with your middle, followed by F on the A string with your pinkie. Then switch up and hit B on the E string with your ring finger, followed by D on the A string with your index, then B# on the E with the pinkie and D# on the A with the middle. Alternating 1-3, 2-4 fingers the whole time. Practice that until it's comfortable (could take a few days), then play the same pattern skipping up to the D string, and finally all the way to the G string. The full spider pattern is played E string to A string, then E string to D string, then E string to G string, then back down E to D, finally back to E to A.
   
   For books, there's a big difference between a good one and a bad one. I can personally recommend Serious Electric Bass, Bass Logic, Bass Grooves, and Standing in the Shadows of Motown (this last book is less of a beginner's guide and more of a project you could spend a lifetime on: i.e. learning from the great James Jamerson). Also highly recommended is Ed Friedland's Building Walking Bass Lines. I also have and recommend The Bass Grimoire, but it is more a reference book for advanced scale and chord building, as opposed to a beginner's guide. Bass Guitar for Dummies is actually pretty good and comprehensive.
   
   And there are some good online resources as well: studybass.com is great and starts from a beginner level. Scott Devine is an amazing teacher especially with more advanced techniques, but also for fundamentals. Paul from How To Play Bass Dot Com just steps you through a bunch of popular rock & r&b tunes...not bad for picking up new songs, but it's far better to learn the theory & structure behind a song than just memorizing the finger patterns. MarloweDK is a great player with hundreds of videos, but he's highly advanced.
   
   Finally, musictheory.net has some great ear training exercises you can do any time, in addition to a wealth of info about basic theory that applies to all instruments.

http://www.scottsbasslessons.com

This was one of my first books. It starts off fairly easy, but gets moving pretty quick.

This is the Tao Te Ching of bass.

This was one of the books that helped get my technique to where it is today. I'm not sure if the new version has all of the same exercises.

Always read notation. Tab becomes a crutch, and the quicker you learn notation, the more you'll use it, and the better you'll get at it. It's a skill, it's frustrating at first, but it's worth it.

This is my favourite Music Theory book.

Transcribe music. Not only learn how to play it by ear, but learn how to write it down as well. It's really hard at first, but it's probably the best thing you can do to learn to jam, interact with other players, and communicate your ideas to anyone at any level.

Want Chops?

Find a qualified bass teacher in your area. Don't go to that guy who plays guitar and teaches bass on the side and only uses tab because he's never had to read. It may not seem like it, but there are differences in technique that an experienced bass player/teacher would know that a guitar player may not. Find a teacher that pushes you every lesson and makes you want to sit in a chair for hours working on technique, transcribing, and listening.

On top of getting an instructor, scour the internet for every piece of information you can get. At first you'll get some bad advice, but you'll find that there is a lot of great information out there. Always test the boundaries of what you're being taught by anyone with the information you're absorbing for where ever you're getting it. One of the best teachers that I had said "If you're teacher tells you there's only one way to do something, it's time to find another teacher".

I'll give you more great advice from a different teacher. He was this old grizzled player that played Jazz before, and after, Jazz was cool. He said:

"There are only three things you need to do to be a successful musician. One: Show up. If you show up every time you're going to be ahead of 95% of the rest of the musicians out there. That means every lesson, every rehearsal, every gig, every time.

Two: Know your parts. If you show up every time, on time, and know what you're supposed to play, you're going to be ahead of 99% of the players out there.

Thirdly: Play your heart out. If you show up, on time, know what you're playing, and love what you're playing, no matter what it is you're playing, then you're going to be in that 1% of musicians that actually get steady gigs."

Have Fun.

Here's what I did when i got started on my first bass - see pics here:

I bought and read three books cover-to-cover:

• Building Electric Guitars - In depth, good theory, something of a "reference"
  
• Electric Guitar and Bass Design: The guitar or bass of your dreams from first draft to complete plan - this book focuses purely on design. I think it's interesting even if you don't want to build because it helps you understand why basses are designed the way they are and what is right for you.
  
• Make Your Own Electric Guitar & Bass - This is a step-by-step recipe for building a specific bass. I didn't make that bass, but it was helpful to follow along.
  
  I watched LOTS of youtube videos. Both on making basses and using wood working tools. I wasn't familiar with wood working walking in, so I would make a list of what I wanted to do each day and then spend 30 minutes or so watching videos on how to use the tools and the step.
  
  I hung out at projectguitar.com. Great website with some really talented builders and noobs like myself. I followed along with other builds and kept a build thread myself. It's amazing how helpful people were in answering very specific questions.
  
  I went window shopping. I lived for several years in Tokyo where there's an entire district of guitar and bass shops. I hit up a bunch of shops, played a bunch of amazing basses, took a ton of pictures, made a bunch of notes, and got a feel for what I wanted. I was able to get my hands on basses in the $5k-$10k price range to see what those builders did. It was inspirational and upped my thinking substantially.
  
  I've now built several basses and two guitars - I am hooked. Playing something that I made myself really adds to my overall enjoyment and it inspires me to practice more. Plus I really like the mind-clearing focus required to be successful in the shop. When I'm working I have to clear my mind and focus only on the task at hand.

One of my favorite things in the world. Don't you just love the way they wrote music? If I may, let me recommend a Beatles songbook to you (if you don't already have it). The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook.

I have been playing Beatles music for 25 years or so, and there are many inaccurate songbooks. Mostly, really. This is one of the best, simple layout, very clear, seemingly very accurate There are almost always some assorted questionable transcriptions in any Beatles book that is essentially mostly scored by ear, but this is one that seems to have the least. The layout is great for someone just wanting to sit and play the chords on a guitar because there is no sheet music for melody or piano that you don't need taking up space, just the needed chord diagrams up top, then just the lyrics with the chord names above each line.

Anyway, sorry if I've come across like a know-it-all, just sharing my love of playing the beautiful songs of our boys on my acoustic, as well as one of my favorite books to use.. and I have many!

So yeah. Happy playing! And good for you for starting and staying with it! I'm sure it's a joy. In fact, I know it is.

I was actually in this exact situation when I started playing - was a highschooler with free time and just wanted to learn banjo.

1. Get a banjo: If you don't have one already, then this part is sort of a requirement. A standard 5-string is the best place to start. This Deering is a fantastic beginner banjo (and not too bad for performing either), but if price is an issue, I've heard that Gold Tone's work just fine as well.
   
2. Get some books/material: This book is by the master himself (Earl Scruggs). It's sort of an essential for anyone looking to play classic 3-finger (Scruggs style) banjo. If you're looking to play Clawhammer perhaps, this is a very good book for learning.
   
3. PRACTICE: It can seem difficult at first, but I recommend practicing as much as possible. When I first started, I practiced for about 1-2 hours everyday for a solid month. I was able to improve very quickly. And the best part is that I enjoyed every bit of it. That's another thing, if you really enjoy playing, then practicing shouldn't be verry difficult for you.
   
   Good luck, and have fun!

• Stamina, stamina, stamina. If you're bored or need something to do while dinner is heating up, grab your bass and just do 8^th or 16^th note runs. I've never used a grip or finger strengthener, but I've heard good things about them.
  
  
• Stretches. Do lots of left hand stretching exercises. This will be really valuable as you continue. This is a brick wall that I've been hitting lately.
  
  
• Learn blues and jazz. They really help.
  
  
• Invest in a nice fuzz pedal, compressor pedal, and a wah pedal. As you get further in, you'll be able to use these to really shape your tone. Also, playing Cliff-era Metallica or Black Sabbath/Heaven and Hell songs is much more fun when you have distortion.
  
  
• Don't overplay. As soon as it starts to really burn, stop. If you over-exert yourself, you're just fucking yourself over. Callouses are fine (and are a badge of honor, IMO), but if you start bleeding or really ripping up your fingers, set down the bass.
  
  
• TalkBass is a wonderful community. They are very willing to help you with songs and just shoot the shit about bass. There's a strong metal community on there.
  
  
• You should think about getting Alex Webster (of Cannibal Corpse and Blotted Science)'s instructional book. It's been a big help for me, especially on working on my stretches and three finger technique. (I'm not an affiliate, so no monetary gain from that link for me)
  
  
• Have fun. Seriously, just enjoy it. That's the most important thing, isn't it? :)

work through the original Aaron Shearer books (I linked book 1, there are 3, you should at least go through the first two and maybe some of the supplemental ones) . If your classical technique is decent then you will breeze through them pretty quickly but you might pick up a few subtle things like playing rest-stroke with your thumb at the same time as free-stroke with your fingers and vice-versa. Once you are good there there are two books you should buy: Pumping Nylon for the various exercises it has. They are very good if you play them regularly. Then buy The Library of Guitar Classics. It is a big spiral bound book of repertoire that looks like a lot of those piano-rep books. It has music ranging from easy to very hard and from the renaissance period all the way through the romantic era with pieces by Tarrega and Albeniz. There is a lot of really good rep in there. There is also a second volume of the book that is almost as good. When it comes to more modern music buy the Villa-Lobos book and work through some of that stuff. It is a great book that was edited by - if I remember correctly - Frederick Noad. There are also some really good books with the complete Bach cello/lute suites (although some of that can be found in the books I already mentioned).

If you REALLY want to kick your ass, see if you can dig up a copy of the Abel Carlevaro right hand book. It is like the Giuliani 120 studies on steroids. I have never struggled that hard to play an arpeggio in my life! I think it is this book but I am not sure. I had a really old photo-copy of it and I don't know where it came from.

I make enough from guitar building and repair to be able to fund it as a hobby in itself. You're looking at a significant initial investment in tools, workspace, and marketing in a market that's pretty saturated with factory guitars and independent builders. I hope someday to build up a customer base large enough to make this a career, but until then I enjoy it as a hobby and an art that pays for itself. As an art, I'd suggest picking up a couple of books:

Guitar making tradition and technology and Make your own electric guitar.

Both of these will give you a great background on how to build an instrument. The links in the sidebar will be very helpful to you as well.

One thing that has been helpful to me is engaging in your local music community. I live in an area of the US with lots of churches and worship pastors that need their guitars worked on. I work on their guitars and every now and then do builds for them that meet the needs they're looking for. I don't know what your community looks like, but engaging with musicians where they're at and building up a report is the beginning to a self-sustaining hobby and hopefully will carry you to a business.

Best of luck to you!

You're not going to get a lot of people in r/classicalGuitar that are going to answer this without some kind of recommendation that you just improve your regular score reading skills instead. Tab can be a great tool at times, but more often it seems to be used as crutch.

My advice is to start sight reading as much as you can whenever you find tab-free scores because it is skill that you can only develop with dedicated and focused practice. Whenever you go to the effort to transcribe a score to Tab, you are still leaning on a crutch because when you start playing, you aren't using the music, you're using your Tab instead and not actually getting any score reading practice in. In your mind, you are probably translating your scores to Tab instead of actually reading the score. Tab and score notation are similar in that respect. In fact, I suspect that if you just force yourself to give up tab you'll see an amazing and very rapid increase in your ability to process standard scores.

Here is a personal example: When I read Spanish I am not actually reading Spanish... I'm translating it into something I am familiar with. I still have to learn to transform my thought process into Spanish before I am truly reading Spanish. Once I stop communicating by saying buenos noches to mean "good afternoon/night" and I just start saying buenos noches when I mean "buenos noches", I am actually speaking Spanish. Until then, I am just translating words. That won't change until I immerse myself in Spanish without clinging to English as my crutch. The same thing applies to changing from Tab notation to score notation.

http://www.amazon.com/Sight-Reading-Classical-Guitar-Level/dp/0769209742/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333574358&sr=8-1

I have this book and it is great practice in sight reading and you may want to check it out. It is nothing more than a bunch of short sight reading exercises. Teach yourself one or two of them a day without transcribing them to tab first and I am absolutely confident that your reading skills will improve noticeably.

If you are really insistent on using Tab though, classtab.org is decent.

This book has some decent stuff in it as well: http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Spanish-Guitar-Solos-Book/dp/1603780599/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333575720&sr=1-1

If you ever want to get a little deeper, I'd recommend this book. It presumed a good bit of knowledge of guitar and basic theory, but it tells you right up front all of the shapes you need to know as a pre-req. Essentially just the basic majors, minors, and important 7ths built both off of the 5th and 6th string.

Beyond that, it really does get in deep on how to learn about your chord shapes anywhere. It has a great section and exercise specifically on building triads anywhere on the neck build from 6th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd string that basically will let you understand how those shapes work, and how to alter pitches to get from major to minor to diminished, etc. just like you might on piano.

It also gets pretty quickly into 7ths, and then rootless 9ths and such as well as tons of other stuff. It's mostly a lot of concepts for soloing, but it really does theory on guitar better than any other book I've looked at.

Edit: As a side note, knowing the scale that fits around a given chord and corresponds to it can really help with this too. It's easy to get into pure muscle memory with guitar scales, but as you're playing them, try to take note of where 3, 5, and 7 on. By extension you'll get a good vibe of where 2, 4, 6 are (and that means 9, 11, and 13 as well). Now when you play a chord in a certain place on the neck and know the corresponding scale, it actually makes it easier to be aware of subtle changes you can make for different colors (like adding a b9 to a dominant chord). It also will makes you a lot more aware of the fretboard beyond just your 6th and 5th string as roots for barre/power chords.

A couple of good books that I have are the Maran Guitar book and Mel Bay's Modern Guitar Method: Grade 1. The first book shows you the absolute basics of playing the guitar along with choosing a guitar, taking care of a guitar. sitting properly with a guitar, tuning different guitars, stringing different guitars, and stuff like that. Of course, this is in addition to a standard lesson plan and chapters for specific styles like rock, jazz or blues.


The second book is great when you're already familiar with what it means to be comfortable holding a guitar and playing a few notes correctly. If you want to learn how to play for real and read music, this book is great. It's very straightforward and has nice pictures for reference.

Also, use this online metronome when you practice. Set the beats-per-minute to something really low and try to play in-time with the sheet music. When you are able to play the piece at this low tempo 100% without any mistakes, move up a few BPM and do it again.

Eventually you'll be able to play the song perfectly at the song's real tempo better than you ever could just starting to play at its standard tempo. Trust me. This is the best way to learn songs and avoid really bad guitar-playing habits.

Take it slow. Speed and skill come with time, sometimes seemingly without reason.

One thing I tried doing was learning every chord in every position and every inversion. I'm not done writing them up, but I have charts for dominant, major, minor, and half-diminished chords I could scan for you. I also have the arpeggios to be played over the chords.

Another thing is to learn are your scale modes. I'll pick either 4 modes in 1 position or 1 mode in 4 positions and practice each scale for 5 minutes.

You could improve your sight reading with this. It's not meant to be studied, but to be opened up to a random page and played.

I'm also a fan of speed and dexterity exercises. You don't have to shred, but sometimes you need to get from point A to point B in a hurry. After playing these for a while, you'll also feel less fatigue. My favorite books for this are John Petrucci's Wild Stringdom and Frank Gambale's Technique Books

Also, if you really get into jazz, I highly recommend The Jazz Theory Book. It will help with your improvisation and teach you how songs are structured, which will help you with other genres. A more classic theory book that's good is The Complete Musician.

After you get technique stuff down, it all comes down to where you want to be as a player. What do you want to play? Do you want to write? Do you want to do covers? Maybe you want to teach.

Sorry this was so long. I love teaching music myself, so if you want to learn anything specific, PM me and I should be able to help you out and send you some materials.

You can't buy a factory made classical guitar that is truly high quality. Yamaha makes great beginning classical guitars. I wouldn't pay over $500 for anything with a "brand name," if you're looking for a nice classical then start looking for luthiers or a dealer in your area that sells luthier guitars(either should let you try their guitars before you buy).


D'addario Pro-Arte strings are generally regarded as the all-around best classical guitar strings, and fortunately they're also the cheapest. Go with normal or hard tension if you like more resistance.


The book Pumping Nylon is a great technical resource for classical guitarists at any level.
http://www.amazon.com/Pumping-Nylon-Scott-Tennant/dp/088284721X

http://www.amazon.com/Library-Guitar-Classics-willard-Series/dp/0825614759/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y

^ Volume 1 and 2 of that guitar classics book are great for finding rep out of, they have great music from different eras, composers, and difficulties.


More specifically, studies by Sor, Carcassi, or Brouwer are great for beginning pieces. You can move from there to pieces by Tarrega, Villalobos, possibly some easier Bach like BWV999 or Cello Suite#1. Really anything you want. For best results, seek our recordings and videos of well-renowned(not just some shmuck on youtube) guitarists. Use these to make sure you're not playing wrong notes, inspire your own interpretation, and possibly steal their fingerings if it's a video.

With jazz one of the most important things is to have a very developed understanding of theory, I played in my college's jazz band this year and a lot of the time I was expected to go off a chord chart. Adam Neely does a good video of quickly breaking down some of the important aspects when approaching chords and Scott Devine has a good video on phrasing. Both of them have really good videos on the subject and I'd definitely recommend referring to their content.

Two good books that I've used are Ed Friedland's Jazz Bass and Joel Di Bartolo's Serious Electric Bass, the former covers a lot of standard concepts and while it doesn't really go into too much depth all the information is well presented and useful. The latter goes over a lot of scales, arpeggio patterns for certain chords and scales and it even gives you blank staff to come up with your own ideas.

Honestly though I think your best bet is to go listen to some jazz players, I would recommend Ron Carter and Paul Chambers and then learn their bass parts (preferably by ear) and analyze what they're doing in certain situations and what they're doing over certain chords. There's a lot of freedom and personal style in jazz and it's not something that can be easily taught by reading and watching videos X and Y, at least in my opinion. Don't take that as don't use videos or books just don't feel you have to abide by a certain technique or approach that is mentioned.

I'd recommend Jazz Guitar: Complete Edition by Jody Fisher. It covers all the important topics in a fairly straightforward way and comes with a CD of examples and backing tracks. It's aimed at intermediate guitarists, but your experience should be sufficient.

The old standard was Mickey Baker's Jazz Guitar, but I'm not a huge fan. The learning curve is extremely steep and there's not a great deal of theory or explanation. It'd be a really useful companion to lessons with a teacher, but I think that most beginners would really struggle with it.

A good alternative to the Jody Fisher book is A Modern Method For Guitar by William Leavitt. The learning curve is fairly gradual, but it's tough going - everything is written in standard notation and there's no real instruction as such. It seems to be inspired by the Suzuki method. Everything is taught through progressively more demanding examples. You probably won't get stuck on anything, but you will need to do a bit of thinking to figure stuff out for yourself.

If you want to learn jazz theory in depth, I'd strongly recommend Jazzology by Rawlins and Bahha. It's the clearest, most elegant explanation of how everything fits together in jazz. It's not specifically written for guitar, but the theory is universal. The Jody Fisher book covers all the theory that you really need to know, but Jazzology would be a really good supplement if you like to understand things in detail.

In your jazz guitar journey, you'll probably come across The Real Book. It's an essential reference text, containing lead sheets for hundreds of the most popular jazz tunes. It's how most of us learned our repertoire and most of us still have a copy in our gig bag pocket. Today, you have a huge advantage in learning tunes because of the fabulous iReal Pro. It's an app version of The Real Book, but it can also play backing tracks for any tune in any key and at any tempo. It's an absolute boon when you're learning to play solos.

Finally, I'd suggest just listening to a whole bunch of jazz, not just jazz guitar. You should know Joe Pass, Ted Greene and Wes Montgomery, but you should also know Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie.

Eric Clapton, despite making an album of standards, is not a jazz player. This is coming from someone who bought Disraeli Gears as a kid around the time it came out (Cream record with Eric as guitarist if you're not already familiar). I'm not saying he's not fine to listen to, but calling him "jazz" in the company of other jazz players is probably not a good idea. ;-)

I'm reading some of the other comments and see you're getting downvoted. If you're serious about learning this music I'm sorry other people are taking this attitude towards you.

First of all, music isn't about the gear, necessarily. Plenty of great jazz players such as Ed Bickert, Lenny Breau, Mike Stern, and Ted Greene used solid body guitars even Joe Pass used one for a while. Hollow body guitars, though, can sound great and have "the vibe." The main thing you'll want to look for in an amp is that it's clean and not too bright, as in too much treble. As others have mentioned most "traditional" jazz players don't use pedals, but some like Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Mike Stern, and Alan Holdsworth do in more modern settings. In what we call mainstream it's generally only some reverb, maybe a pinch of delay or a little chorus.

I read on one post that you have had trouble transcribing. Although there are a very few good players who say they don't transcribe the overwhelming majority of good players do/did. It can be really frustrating at first but it's one of the best bangs for the buck as far as learning to play. Louis Armstrong is a good starting point, so is Charlie Christian, the first electric guitar "star." The golden rule is "learn one note at a time."

If you're not up on music theory and how to read music you will probably want to start learning how asap. Here's a good book for learning to read. If you're relying on TAB you should quit using it immediately. This is one of the few things I think is non-negotiable. TAB is fine for rock and some other styles but if you want to play jazz it will only hold you back.

The vast majority of jazz players learn to improvise on a body of songs that are loosely called "standards." There are a lot of books out there that have these tunes such as the Hal Leonard Real Books and the Chuck Sher series of New Real Books. Another source is Jamey Aebersold's play-a-long albums and books, featuring real musicians playing backing tracks for you to practice soloing with. A lot of people use the phone ap iReal Pro, but the feel is quite mechanical and you only get the chords, no melodies.

Jamey Aebersold also puts out a free handbook called the Red Book that is packed with info about how to improvise. Download it here.

Keep after it and keep coming back to this sub for tips.

Thanks, I've done necks before, but they are a lot more work, so I didn't feel like spending the time with this one. Also, I found an awesome deal on this neck, so it was sort of a no-brainer.

I'd recommend this book. It is a great resource for the whole process. There definitely are a few specialized tools you'll need, but most of the stuff can be done with normal wood shop equipment (routers, table saw, etc.) that'll serve you well for other woodworking as well. Sound like a decent plan though, best way is to just start doing something; baby steps. :)

This is such an important (and IMO urgent) question for so many.

Sadly, the vast majority of guitar instructional material is either a) written for the unserious learner or b) written to not scare away the up-until-now-unserious learner.

That's why you see so many books and blogs on understanding theory (or playing jazz) that are full of TABs––in order to get the now-serious student to buy the book (or sign up for the course, etc) you first have to reassure them that everything is tabbed out and they won't have to read music, as if TAB and theory weren't at odds with each other.

Kudos to /u/igotthejack for this:

> While doing this focus on the note names while you play so by the time you're done you've also memorised all the notes on the fretboard.

And Ben Levin's youtube series is one of the few instructional pieces that doesn't make me want to stab myself in the face with one of the many pointy ends on a shredder's guitar.

Other quality standouts include:

First, Learn To Practice by Tom Heany

Music Reading For Guitar By David Oakes

Modern Method For Guitar Vols 1, 2, & 3 by William Leavitt

The Real Easy Ear Training Book by Roberta Radley


But there's good news in this too:

Because the vast majority of talented guitarists are so busy chasing their tails trying to figure out how to sweep pick faster or two-handed tap in the LandoCalrissian mode, even reasonably talented players with mediocre reading skills and a halfway decent knowledge of practical music theory get hired to play really great gigs.

That's my experience anyway. And getting hired for those gigs put me in contact with so many world-class players, which a) did as much as anything else to make me a "real" player, and b) helped me realize how so many of the things in the guitar-teacher-circle-jerk-echo-chamber are unimportant.

I think if you can get your practicing organized, fall in love with the metronome, record yourself (and listen back) often, and train your ear, you will be one badass player in a reasonably short time.

And if you learn the instrument in a way that lets you communicate with other non-guitarist musicians, you set yourself up to get actual paying work (and music theory gets waaaaaay easier).

My suggested order is:

1. Names of notes (to the point you prefer them to TAB coordinates: that's not the 8th fret of the 3rd string, it's Eb)
   
2. What notes go together in keys (ie know the Circle of Fifths so well you're never in doubt as to whether it should be called D# or Eb)
   
3. Understand how chords are built (so you're unfazed by something like | Fm7b5 Bb7b9 | Ebm9 | even if you've never played it before).
   
4. Understand how chords get built into progressions. (so when you glance that last example, you immediately think "oh, ii-V-i. Eb harmonic minor.)
   
5. Rhythmic notation (I'd say at least 80% of the guitar charts put in front of me on a paying gig are chords with rhythmic hits and no further melodic notation to read.)
   
6. Chart reading (knowing what "DS al Coda" and "second system" and "tag" and "ritard" mean, and what musician slang like "football" and "trashcan" and "railroad tracks" and "split the difference" mean.)
   
   Shameless plug, but I built a system that teaches these in a tiny daily lesson delivered by email. 1-4 are done, 5 & 6 are on their way soon. Free for now, just sign up for the first one (Note Names) and it'll walk you through all 6 in order (I'll be done with 5 & 6 by the time you finish 4).
   
   After that, read through the David Oakes & William Leavitt books mentioned above and you'll be 80% of the way to professional musicianship. A dedicated student (who already has a fair amount of technical proficiency) could pull that off in 6 months.
   
   TL:DR - The fact that you are even asking a question like this leads me to believe that you'll do just fine. Good luck!
   

I don't want to make any enemies here, so don't take this the wrong way CactaurJack, but please don't buy an Ibanez. They are never worth shit resale, they are ugly as sin and I've never liked any that I played.

I would recommend a Mexican Strat. They will be in your price range and you will always be able to resell easily for about $250-$275.

They will sometimes not be set up real well, but that is when you take the time and learn how to do basic setups on your guitar. You can find out a ton of great stuff from books like this, that, or Dan Erlewine's....or sites like Project Guitar and/or Fret Not.

I would say check out some guitars in the used section on guitar center's website...you can find pretty good deals on there. Check your local store, and last resort check local pawn shops, they'll sometimes have something for a good price, but most of the time are fucking jip joints, so be careful.

Used is good because it comes with built in mojo. Give this a shot as well as maybe just using the above resources to re-setup your squire...that may be all it needs and you'll be good to go.

I'm currently building my first acoustic guitar, I didn't know anything about woodworking before starting, so I don't have a lot of experience but here are my thoughts:

I don't think you need a drum sander, at least not yet. You can do a nice job using a well sharpened plane, a caliper and a methodical approach. Invest in a good quality #4 or #5 plane, they're expensive but worth it and learn how to sharpen it, seriously your job will be a lot easier if you know how to sharpen your tools. In fact, i'd even consider taking a class.

As for power tools, the only one you absolutely need is a router / laminate trimmer, no way you can route binding channels without one, and it'll be great for working on the rosette and the truss rod slot.

I used a DIY bending iron powered by a light bulb, cost me about $40 and an afternoon to build one, it did a decent job, except that I wish it had a different shape with different radii, also it can be a bit tricky to set it to the right temperature, maybe it'd be easier using a torch but i'm not sure. If you can afford it could be a good idea to buy one, it seems to be the kind of tool that last a lifetime.

The advice about getting new tools when you need them is a sound one, otherwise you risk buying stuff you don't really need. At the beginning you just need a plane, a couple of chisels, a backsaw, measuring tools (caliper, straight edge...) and clamps.

Buy Cumpiano's book, read it and check luthiers blogs, forums and videos they're a great source of information. A blog that really helped me is that one he even has a [list] (http://acousticguitarbuild.blogspot.fr/2009/01/essential-tools-and-materials-to-get.html) of basic tools you need, check it out.

If you can find it, Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo is a wonderful source. It's thick and may be a little intimidating, but it is a wealth of knowledge. How To Play Banjo is the book that my teacher used my first year of taking lessons. It is written in a way that is straightforward and the lessons progress in a very logical way. Most books are going to assume that you are using a resonator/closed back/bluegrass banjo which will have a wooden pot called a "resonator" behind the head to make it louder. This is mostly used by bluegrass musicians because of it's volume and it's tone will have more of a punch behind it. These banjos are used for playing the three-finger bluegrass style you would hear from nearly every bluegrass banjoist out there. You can also use an open-back banjo which is a more traditional and older style of banjo. These aren't as popular with bluegrass bands because the lack of a resonator produces a far more mellow and quieter sounds. Open back banjos are predominantly used for playing the clawhammer/frailing/old-time style. How To Play Banjo will teach you both methods, whereas Earl Scruggs' book will only teach you bluegrass style, which makes sense considering Scruggs invented the three-finger style which is sometimes called "Scruggs-style". As far as what banjo to buy, I've been a fan of Deering Banjo Company for a very long time. If you can afford them, Gibson banjos are well respected, but you're really paying for the Gibson name. I always suggest Deering because banjos are the only instruments they produce, and they know what they're doing. So I hope I've at least pointed you in the right direction and if you have any questions feel free to ask!

The best way to start, IMO, is to read. Get as much info as you can on the subject. There's a couple of books that are pretty good; This One or This One are good places to start. Another thought is to check out websites like projectguitar.com. They've also got a forum with lots of tips and such.

Finally, it's going to be a big asset if you already know your way around some various woodshop machinery, if you plan on doing it all from scratch. Knowing how to solder helps too.
One final thing. Do't expect to be able to build something utterly incredible your first time around. Start simple; it's easy to bite off more than you can chew. You will make mistakes; it's pretty much guaranteed. Don't worry about it. When you finally finish, you'll have an instrument that you can be proud of.

Good luck!

EDIT: Almost forgot, there's also an /r/luthier subreddit as well.

Ah man, I wanna go to Burning Man soooo badly...

Hm. Looks like you like books, and I always think that books make the best gifts, so...What about [this] (http://www.amazon.com/Vonnegut-volumes-Rosewater-Welcome-Slaughterhouse/dp/B000BVFV48/ref=sr_1_18?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373428804&sr=1-18&keywords=kurt+vonnegut+collection) It has some of my favorite Vonnegut, although no Breakfast of Champions. Not sure if it's actually cheaper to get the boxed set, but it's an easy way to show all of them at once ;)
Or how about some lighter fare. Terry Pratchett is funny and easy to get into from any book in the series.
Or, I know that people sit around and sing songs sometimes...and that's my favorite part of any get-together! As lots of people know the Beatles, what about this great songbook? It's one of my favorites, and it's got all the chords and lyrics to tons of songs, many that people forget about but still like! (You'll need a good camp guitar to go with it...)(now I'm just thinking of things I brought on my recent camping trip...I just got back so it's fresh in my mind...)

In my opinion, it's better to spend your money on music rather than books.

There are some banjo books that are important. I used to own these. I really should build my library back up. Currently I only have the "Hot Licks," "Banjo Styles by Bela Fleck" and "Masters of the Five String" as I've leant out the other ones and never got them back.

Earl Scruggs and the 5-string banjo has already been mentioned. I would recommend trying to find an older version, simply because I'm a nerd.

Masters of the Five String Banjo. A very cool, very informative piece on bluegrass banjo players, their set-up, and some tablature. Obviously dated, but an incredibly insightful book.

Melodic Banjo: by Tony Trishka. Again, I like the older cover

Hot Licks for Bluegrass Banjo, another book by Tony Trishka, is pretty good.

Banjo Picking Styles: Bela Fleck is also a pretty interesting book. And not just for the 80s shirt that Bela is wearing on the front.

If you're looking for specific bluegrass songbooks.

Bluegrass Songbook, by Pete Wernick. Seriously, this is a great book.

Bluegrass Fakebook. This covers most of the standards.

And though you didn't ask, here are some other books that may be of interest to bluegrass/banjo nerds:

Bluegrass: A History Neil Rosenberg's very thorough history of Bluegrass music

Spann's Guide to Gibson 1902-1941. If you're interested in prewar Gibson banjo, this is an incredible resource.

Gibson Mastertone: Flathead Five-string Banjos of the 1930s and 40s. For the prewar nuts.

Can't You Hear Me Calling: The Life of Bill Monroe Father of Bluegrass Music. An interested read.

What I Know 'Bout What I Know: The Musical Life of An Itinerant Banjo Player. This is an autobiography of Butch Robins. It's... interesting.

You need a target or goal or an end point. I was in a similar funk as you. I needed to figure out WHAT I wanted to work on and be better at. I was stuck making 30 second funk covers for Instagram but not really making any progress. You can play scales all day but if you're not learning them to play over chords then what's the point?

I've found what works best for me is to get a book. For instance say you wanted to work on improvising and writing better lines, then pick up something like this book and just read it cover to cover. You're now making progress towards a single goal.

You mention not being able to play those fast Geddy licks. Is that the goal? Then start trying to learn some Rush songs. Start slow. Get an app to slow down the song so you can hear it, and work on your speed.

Your timing feeling off? Get a syncopation book.

I was taught in a group guitar class from the Christopher Parkening books--they're okay as far as method books go (though our class tended to joke that Mr. Parkening must be a raging narcissist with all the glamour shots of him sprinkled through the book).

I eventually discovered the Frederick Noad series of books and immediately fell in love with them. His Solo Guitar Playing 1 book is very meticulous and comprehensive. Most of the pieces include parts for a teacher and student, but its still useful for solo learning. He's also published a several compendiums of period music (Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic era, etc.) that are fun to play from.

The "Library of Guitar Classics" is also pretty good to have around as it is a nice compendium of solo classical guitar works from all eras and from many composers. It'll keep you busy for a looooooong time.

If you already have a guitar you love, and you already have a versatile amp that can hook up to your computer as an interface, you're in pretty good shape.

Here are some of the best things you can own to improve your playing, if you don't already have them:

• Metronome
  
  
• Tuner pedal
  
  
• Looper pedal (TC Electronic Ditto or Ditto X2 are popular choices)
  
  
• Sight-reading books like this one or this one
  
  
• Music theory books like this one or this one
  
  If you only have 1 or 2 pedals you don't need a pedalboard.
  
  If you are interested in pedals but don't know what you want, a multi-effect unit is a great choice.
  
  If you're looking for an all-in-one effect unit & guitar trainer, this is a good choice. It has a built-in tuner, metronome (rare on pedals or multi-FX units), pre-programmed rhythm patterns for jamming, an aux-input for playing along to MP3s, a whole bunch of effects that you can use like a standard effects pedal, and a bunch of other stuff.

Learning "everything" about amps would require an EE degree or a shit ton of reading and hands-on building/repair.

For how they work and effects and stuff, Dave Hunter is great at explaining these things and wrote a couple of books pertinent to this exact topic.

Dave Hunter. With bonus Champ/Princeton clone build instructions in the back.

Honestly, building an amp will help most, but if you could find a schematic of the Mustang 3, that would help.

Oh, learn to read schematics.

Most major manufacturer amps these days use PCBs and for the lower end amps, surface-mount components, though there are some things in them you can still mod/repair.

It might be helpful to dig through the Fender Amp Field Guide to work through the history of how Fender got to the Mustang 3 amp.

Other possibly useful resources:

Aspen Pitman.
Read the reviews. It's a good book, but it's not a "how to" for amps.

Robert C. Megantz.
Specific to tube amps, but it got great reviews.

TAN. User forum for the Two Stroke amp in Daves book.

AX84. High gain, low wattage open-source amp.

Fender Amp Field Guide.

The Amp Garage.

EL34World.

Red Circuits.

Vintage Amps Forum.

Watts Tube Audio schematics.

Schematic Heaven.

Do note, this is coming from someone that took lessons since I was young and went through courses to be a music educator in college so I may not have the most relatable experience, but here's my take.

I say it depends on the kinds of music you want to learn and play that will influence on what you should be focusing on.

There are beginner books for adults available such as this one that will go through beginning concepts at a much quicker pace than what I went through as a child. A lot of my music friends used something similar (can't find the one they used, sorry) to pass a piano proficiency exam. They did have a professor coach them through, which streamlined the process.

I'd suggest going this route (teacher + adult beginner book) as it will give you the best foundation that can be branched off into whatever interest you have. You'll learn a lot of fundamentals such as proper posture and reading sheet music and you'll do it at a much faster pace than if you were younger.

There are other alternatives too. I had a dorm mate from Costo Rico that just wanted to learn how to jam on the piano when his buddies whips out their classical guitars. So I spent an evening teaching him how scales are formed and how major/minor chords are formed. After a couple weeks of practicing and asking a few questions during that time, he got to the point where he could jam with his buddies. He couldn't read sheet music, but if we tell him what chord and scale, he'd figure out what sounded all right and jam along. He could also look at chords online of simple songs and he'd be able to figure out an arrangement on the piano he could manage within a week.

Hope this helps a bit in your decision :)

I have played for over 40 years... I am learning to sight read right now... I wish I would have started there... imagine if you could only get stories by having someone else read them for you... it really helps become an 'adult' in music... some of the things I found helpful are :

• Play any RHYTHM easily - perfect your timing and sight reading!
  
• Syncopation made easy! Interactive RHYTHM training.
  
• Music Reading for Guitar (It has taken me 2 months to get thru the first 25 pages... I keep going over them again and again because I REALLY want to master this)
  
  I play a dirt cheap guitar and amp (squire tele I spent a week working on the frets and a blackstar 1 watt combo... love this setup)
  
  I put my effort not in what gear I should have, but in how to be the best player I can be.
  
  I would have learned my scales AFTER learning to sight read. I would have learned at least 10 songs like the back of my hand before I ever learned a single scale. I would have taken Mel Bay a lot more seriously.

This was a lifesaver for me. I taught guitar for many years and recommended this to all my students wanting to learn to read. It breaks it down very well and covers just about everything you'll need. Teaches chord chart as well as teaching you to read notes in open, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 12th position. Simple enough to go through it by yourself, but I'd recommend having someone else go through it with you. Even if you didn't necessarily get a guitar tutor, you could have a friend or family member with a good knowledge in theory (even if they play a different instrument) just check in with you every now and then to make sure you're on the right track. Anyway, that's my 2 cents :)

I wish I could help directly, but at least I can give you a good link. I have very little electrical engineering experience--building midi keyboards, etc--but very little actually altering pre-existing circuit patterns. However, I'm looking to build my own amplifier from scratch and have no idea what I'm doing, but many have recommended geting this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Guitar-AMP-Handbook-Understanding/dp/087930863X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342345744&sr=8-1

as a good starting place. Good luck. And if you could point out any other good amp building suggestions/sites for kits or something, I'd appreciate it

Make sure you experiment with which nail shapes work for you. To start, I would just shape my nails around the contour of my fingers and try playing and see which sides need less or more nail. It will take time to get the perfect shape because everyone has a very small difference in the movement of their dominant hand.

Replace your strings every 3 months or so, I recommend D'Addario strings.

Since you haven't played classical before, I assume you have a habit of sticking your non dominant thumb up so it can be seen above the neck. Try to get rid of this. It should be in the middle of the neck, centered with the palm or pointer finger.

Don't use boring outdated instruction books, as it may bore you and cause you to quit classical guitar, though to be fair some 100+ year old books are still great.

This is a great book that I would recommend in a few months once you are a bit better: http://www.amazon.com/Library-Guitar-Classics-willard-Series/dp/0825614759/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335741059&sr=8-1 another good one that you should get right now is Pumping Nylon by Scott Tennant.

If you can't read music you should start forcing yourself to learn it. It will be very tough for a while but if you keep only reading musical notation you will get good at it pretty quickly.

"And most importantly, have fun!"

The most challenging thing for me to learn I think was always sight reading. However, my guitar teacher showed me a good methodology for this, basically he split it up into the different skills you needed to sight read. One skill was reading the rhythms, which was covered by http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Reading-Text-All-Instruments/dp/0769233775 this book, Modern Reading text in 4/4 time. Which is basically a book full to the brim with rhythms. The idea is then that you tap your feet in 4/4 time on the floor and clap and vocalise what ever rhythms are written down. I used to do this for hours, and the rhythms contained in that book went from simple to just insane.

Actual note reading was covered by reading studies for guitar...

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Studies-Guitar-William-Leavitt/dp/0634013351/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311235782&sr=1-3

and advanced reading studies for guitar

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Studies-Guitar-William-Leavitt/dp/0634013351/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311235782&sr=1-3

The methodology for learning was to start ridiculously slowly, with a click at about 30bpm, and to do one note per click. This may seem insanely slow, but it helps you to become relaxed about sight reading, and also trains you to read ahead because you get bored.

This was part of the sight reading task, then after a while of doing this we moved onto sight reading notation from tunes from real books. I learned a few tips from doing this, I'll list the ones I can remember here.

1. When you first see a piece of music, scan it and find out the information listed here.
   2.Work out the structure for the piece, AABA ABAB etc, this will help you to minimize the amount of other analysis you need to do.
   
2. Check out the key signature, and time signature.
   
3. Look for the lowest and highest notes in the tune, this will help you to start off in a comfortable playing position, so you can do the whole tune without worrying about changing position, or knowing when you have to.
   
4. Look out for any accidental notes, if you know them before hand, they are less likely to throw you off.
   
5. Scan the rhythm and quickly hum the rhythm of the tune to yourself, this will also give you chance to scan through the notes once before you actually play the tune.
   
   If you follow these tips, then sight reading will eventually become easy for you, but it takes quite a lot of work to achieve this.

Hello fellow aspiring luthier! I decided a few months back that I wanted to learn how to build guitars too (get away from the computer, learn a skill, etc.). The fact that you have your dad's tools and expertise is a huge booster. I'm starting completely from scratch and it's slowing things down.

A few resources:

Martin Koch's Building Electric Guitars - You'll see this book mentioned often as one of the staple reads. It's cheap and a quick read. Highly recommend giving it a look.

Crimson Guitars - I stumbled upon their kit building series where Ben and his apprentice take a cheap kit and make it an expensive custom guitar. From there, I fell in love. Their YouTube channel is packed with videos meticulously documenting every step of guitar building. Check out the Clarity build series. Their latest bit is a 12 hour guitar build. Crimson also operates a store and produces their own tools and products. I've purchased their fret-leveling kit and am super happy with it. Finally, there is the guild. I haven't joined, yet but intend to eventually.

Pitbull Guitars - In searching around, these were the only guys I could find a PRS-style kit from. Turns out they've got a pretty good resource in their forums (and it's open to anyone). Lots of information throughout the forums (though poorly organized) and helpful folks who have finished many builds.

Just posted clip/description in comments. I will definitely read up on Merlin Blencowe, thanks for the heads up! I'd gotten started with a fantastic book with a great overview/insight on amps and circuits. It's the Guitar Amp Handbook by Dave Hunter and he does a great job with conveying his vast knowledge into easy to understand explanations. Link for those interested: http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Amplifier-Handbook-Understanding-Amplifiers/dp/087930863X

Real books are great. When you feel comfortable find a jazz jam in town, playing with people will help.

Here’s a book I enjoyed:

Building Walking Bass Lines

You should also get this book:



The Improvisers Bass Method Book

The improvisers bass method book is an industry standard. The beginning may be things you already know, but it does a great job providing you with practice techniques that will actually help translate knowledge to playing. I’d highly recommend both in addition to going through the real book. Outside of that just listen to some jazz. A lot of the key is listening. Go put on some Bill Evans or Miles or Mingus and listen to their bassists

i'll be honest, i've played guitar for nearly 10 years now and have read music for 7-8 of those years. for the most part, being able to read music is a great skill to have, but it won't automatically turn you into a completely new player.

if you feel that you're stuck in a rut and want to try something new, listen to new music, and transcribe from different guitarists or even other instrumentalists. whenever i feel stuck, i usually give the guitar a rest and pursue my other interests. when i get back to it, i feel refreshed and even the old things feel new.

if you still want to stick to reading, i recommend you check out this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Reading-Guitar-Complete-Method/dp/0793581885/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452241138&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+read+music+guitar

i've used it multiple times and it has helped me out. on top of that, get yourself a real book and start trying to play tunes that are at your level. in the beginning, you should try and only play tunes that have whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes. you will be able to learn to read proficiently, but it all depends on how much effort you put into it. if you practice reading for 15-30 mins a day, in a year you'll be quite good at it.

right now, i recommend that you do two things:

1. if you haven't, start learning the notes on the fretboard up to the 12th fret. after the 12th, the notes repeat themselves.
   
   
2. start learning where the notes lie on a musical staff, specifically, on a treble clef staff. you should be able to quickly identify where all the notes are, up to two ledger lines, both above and below the musical staff.

/r/classicalguitar has a useful sidebar with resources.


I would start learning to sight read with material such as this from Pebber Brown.

I would then move on to books such as 'Sight Reading For Classical Guitar' by Robert Benedict - book 1 and book 2.

I would also include Giuliani's 120 Right Hand exercises to test my accuracy, and Fernando Sor's Opus 60 for melodic diatonic studies, as well as Op 35 and Op 44 for sight reading, scale/arpeggio studies and position work, as well as being nice to play.

Kitharologus The Path to Virtuosity by Ricardo Iznaola is a collection of discipline exercises which run from the straightfoward to the almost impossible.

Sagreras Guitar Lessons Book 1-3 by Julio Sagreras are also well worth studying as left/right hand discipline studies, and are also nice to listen to.

Learn lots of songs, but also try reading some books. Creative Guitar and its sequel are awesome books, I learned a ton from them. Just remember to take it slow and try to apply the concepts to what you are already playing and new things you're learning. Good luck, have fun!

I suggest you take a look at "The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking: How to Play the Alternating Bass Fingerpicking Style" and consider picking up "Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar" if that's what you're interested in. I have both of them and they helped me get a footing in the style - The former has a lot of great songs for you to learn that you can spin your own variations on and play around with, and there's a followup to it for when you get more advanced. Good luck!

Earl Scruggs and the 5 String Banjo indeed. The master of 3-finger picking or Scruggs style. I bought it, it's terrific for learning.

http://www.amazon.com/Earl-Scruggs-5-String-Banjo-Enhanced/dp/0634060430

Some complaints are it gets complicated quite fast but there's only way to get good at the banjo: practice. But you have to make sure your form is good. Good form will help tremendously.

Oh man, entertainment can be had for relatively pennies my friend.

Check this book out, and look for an inexpensive or second-hand upright piano (ideally a pre-owned or cheap and new keyboard to start, pianos are expensive and need tuning), and go at it. In a year you'll be able to play many simple to intermediate pieces and you'll be able to impress a lot of people and add a very therapeutic practice to your life. Music does a lot for ones attitude and outlook on life.

Don't think you can do it? Ask me any questions because I did exactly this, with the same book, and now my path has lead me into making some of my own electronic music.

It's doable friend. You just need to be patient, persistent and spend a half hour to an hour (even 15-20 mins works) a day tuning out all the distractions in your life and focus on building a new part of your personality. You can do it. That book so easy and simple to understand I bet money anyone could learn.

Guitar is great too. There's no need to invest in a fancy piece, there are plenty of people who started off with an inexpensive guitar or piano and want to part ways with it. Look on Craigslist or your local for sale boards. You'll find some beauty looking for a new student.

Good luck with it! And most importantly, don't do it for the likes or impressing others. Do it for your own personal growth. Witnessing change in your own self is one of the most amazing parts of our short but sweet existence. Give it a shot, you don't have anything to lose but a few dollars and time, but the return you get will pay off in countless ways it's a no brainer!!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0739052055/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1482584630&sr=8-7&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=alfred+piano&dpPl=1&dpID=51PASYE3aXL&ref=plSrch

this book of classical duets is a fantastic way to learn.
https://www.amazon.com/Carulli-Progressive-Student-Teacher-Classical-Guitar/dp/1530036623

get yourself a cheap nylon string guitar and find a player who can read the teacher parts. there is no way around that first task of memorizing all the names of the notes in open/first position. get your c major scale together, then start playing these duets. I've studied reading in a few different ways and I really think this is the best way to start. Once youre well into this book, also start looking at this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Music-Reading-Guitar-Complete-Method/dp/0793581885

those two together will make you a pretty solid reader. good luck.

this will probably have a bit of what your book has, but it's worth the look. I have this sucker and it's HUGE. all kinds of good stuff is in there. some Sor and Giuliani variations, and some other really big pieces. There is a Guitar Classics 2, which I can't vouch for other than that its online sample looks nice. and they're only about $20. not a bad deal, in my opinion. I actually got my copy about 7 years ago and it's holding up well.

http://www.amazon.com/Library-Guitar-Classics-willard/dp/0825614759/ref=pd_rhf_se_shvl17

FWIW, I started off self taught. Learned some basic rolls, "learned" cripple creek, started using a metronome.

I ended up taking lessons at a local place. Huge difference in progress. My biggest problem is that I don't have the time to dedicate to practice that a "young person" might, so I have backed off the lessons for now, mainly to just practice what my teacher shared in a timeframe I can manage. I plan on going back for more soon, and maybe dialing back to 1-2 lessons a month rather than every week.

I highly recommend Bluegrass Banjo for the Complete Ignoramus by Wayne Erbsen, whether you are self teaching or with an instructor. I also have Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo (get the one with the CD). A lot of folks recommend it for "learnin' like Earl", but it can get very complicated very quickly, especially for someone without any musical background. It does have all the tabs for Earl's stuff that you could home for though.

All of this of course involves you having a banjo. I have a Rogue, I'm happy with it, my teacher thinks it sounds alright too. Others on this subreddit might not be fans but it works for me. I also got a Mike's Mute to save my marriage.

OK. This is a beyond a beginner level, but hear me out -

If you are serious about learning the classical guitar, you should really look into picking up Kitharologus: The Path to Virtuosity, by Ricardo Iznaola. It can challenge even a seasoned player, but if you begin now and are serious about your practice, the drills in this book will have you playing better and more confidently without a doubt.

Not specific to Flamenco, but this is a pretty good book of classical guitar exercises that will help develop your right hand technique.

So many people seem to have this idea that they're just going to "learn theory." Like that's it.

Like there will be this AHA I NOW KNOW THE MUSICAL THEORY I CAN NOW WRITE THE MUSIC.

But in all seriousness. Yeah you will learn theory. If music is going to be a life long pursuit you will never STOP learning theory. Unless you're not serious about it. Then you might just learn what I IV V means write some pop songs and stop there. I digress..

First thing. Learn to read music. DO NOT READ TAB. Learn all the notes on the fret board. Not like you can count up to it and realize that something is a C. Like you KNOW IT. Point to it and you know what note it is. Start reading music here.

Another good way to learn the notes on the fretboard is to pick 4 triads of different qualities. One major, one minor, one diminished, and one augmented triad and play them in all inversions in all positions on the neck while saying the note names. And then pick 4 new triads the next day. Do not just learn the shapes. This will probably take you 2 hours on your first day if you're as thorough as you should be.

If you don't know what any of that means that's fine for now. Those are some pretty basic concepts that you'll learn pretty soon if you're serious about this.

This guy knows his shit. Learn from him. Take it slow. Don't just watch the video and go "Yeah that makes sense." You need to KNOW IT. Drill the concepts a few hours a day.

You could buy a music text book.

Or get an actual guitar teacher. I'd recommend learning jazz because unlike a lot of rock or pop players they actual know their shit about theory and their instrument. You kinda have to know your shit to play jazz. Either that or classical. But jazz theory is more in line with modern music.

Segway: Buy a Real Book

Start off in there with Autumn Leaves or something else easy.

If you're really beginner-y start here.

While that guy's course is good it really focuses on technique. You learn basically no theory from that guy. Just shapes and tabs. Doesn't even use standard notation. His jazz course is ok. It's on his side bar.

This guy's stuff is good for a beginner in jazz. But a beginner in jazz is not exactly beginner level for some other genres. I think you need a pretty solid level of understanding to understand what he's talking about.

That should get you started..

[Edit] Some people have this disconnect. They think that learning theory is somehow separate from song writing. Learning theory will open so many doors to you and show you why and how things work. So that you can actually understand what you're doing.

If I wanted to build a house I could just jump in and start building a house. I'd probably come across a lot of problems. My first house might suck and have a leaky roof or bad plumbing or something. But I could probably learn a long the way. Maybe after I build a ton of crappy houses I could figure out for myself why things work.

Or.. I could look through the writings of the millions of house builders that came before me and see what they found out works and what doesn't. Then maybe my first house will have some issues and it might not be so easy to pull off but I'd be better off learning from the people who came before me than trying to figure it out myself. By doing this I have just saved myself the time of trying to rediscover the wheel so to speak.

That's what learning theory will do for you.

No, the saddles won't be even except under very rare circumstances. The saddles are individual adjustments for individual strings, and thus will have different set distances when everything is intonated correctly.

​

I hope this doesn't come across as rude, but if you aren't willing to take your guitar to a shop that's 22 miles away to be setup, and you aren't willing to live with the buzz, then you're going to have to learn to do it yourself. There are some great resources online, but intonation can be confusing and it will take some time, some trial and error, and some effort to get down. Basically, each string saddle can be moved vertically (towards/away from the guitar body) to adjust string height, but can also be moved horizontally (closer/further from the neck) in order to change the effective length of the string (between the saddle and the nut at the other end of the neck). The length of the string is directly proportional to its fundamental frequency as it vibrates, so if the string is in tune at one part of the neck, but not at other parts of the neck you can reduce this problem by changing the effective string length (again, distance between the saddle and the nut) by adjusting the saddle towards/away from the neck. It is HIGHLY unlikely that you will have a situation where all of the saddles are lined up at the same distance and each string is also intonated correctly.

​

The Guitar Player Repair Guide is a very inexpensive book that thoroughly covers proper guitar setup techniques and I highly recommend getting it if you are hoping to learn this skill on your own. It helped me a TON when I was learning guitar setups and you can usually pick up a copy for less than $10 if you are in the USA.

I recommend William Leavitt's Reading Studies for Guitar. I've been reading two pages a day and it's been really helping me to improve. The key is to read through them with a metronome and don't stop at all to correct your mistakes- that's how you really get better at sight reading.

Now when it comes to reading in big band, you've got the right idea. I always check, in order: key, time signature, road map (repeats/coda), highest/lowest note you'll be playing in the part, then determine best caged position(s). If you still have time left after doing those, try to learn the trickiest parts (difficult rhythms, lines with accidentals). If you can do all that while the band director is still talking to the horn section or whatever, you'll be set when he counts you in! Hope this helps!

Here's the book I mentioned:

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Studies-Guitar-Positions-Multi-Position/dp/0634013351

David Oakes' book on Sight Reading for Guitar is a decent one for learning how to sight-read if you're a beginner:

https://www.amazon.com/Music-Reading-Guitar-Complete-Method/dp/0793581885/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466625720&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=David+Oates+sight+reading

If you get through that one, try out William Leavitt's Melodic Rhythms for Guitar. This one is really solid:

https://www.amazon.com/Melodic-Rhythms-Guitar-William-Leavitt/dp/0634013327/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466625895&sr=1-5&keywords=William+Leavitt

I've not looked through this one, but if you're interested in combining classical guitar and sight reading, it might be worth a shot:

https://www.amazon.com/Sight-Reading-Classical-Guitar-Level/dp/0769209742/ref=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_15?ie=UTF8&dpID=514XaC6KshL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_SL500_SR103%2C135_&psc=1&refRID=0E43T3ND9D1TG4KDPZVE

Good luck!

The rhythm: It's very common for old jazz tunes to be played with a bit of swing rather than exactly as written. That's what you're hearing on the recordings.

It's also very common to play in different keys other than the original, you can probably find recordings in many different keys. You have to either find a chart in the key you want to play with or transpose the chart.

You wrote "the second bar" but I think you meant the first bar of the second system. Each little block is a measure or bar, each new line of bars on the paper is a system. The parenthesis ( ) around the natural sign are not necessary and don't really do anything, I would say they are a courtesy to point at that this change isn't happening a lot, unlike the B-natural which happens almost every time.

I know it sounds boring, but really the best way for you to learn to read sheet music is to start from the beginning, otherwise you are going to have LOTS of these kind of questions. I'd suggest a book like http://www.amazon.com/Mel-Bays-Modern-Guitar-Method/dp/0871663546 or there are probably some websites that will teach you.

Probably not the answer you're looking for, but Alex Webster's book, "Extreme Metal Bass", has helped me more than you could imagine. It's not really metal stuff (even though the scales and intervals are common in extreme metal), but the exercises in the book are absolutely amazing at building speed and precision. Not even exagerating, but in only two months of practicing just tje first few exercises, I am able to play songs that I thought I would not ever be able to play.

It goes over fingering patterns, crazy scales, stretching exercises, tapping exercises, string skipping, and many combinations of those. If you don't mind the fact that it is a an metal-based book, I would absolutely recommend this book. 15$ on amazon and extremely high quality, and comes with an access code to hear the exercises online.

edit: link

https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Metal-Bass-Techniques-Applications/dp/1423497155

I was a violin maker for ten years. I went to violin making school for about four years. I had basically no woodworking experience with woodworking aside from one shop class in high school. Just get some tools, a good book and give it a shot. This book is super cool: https://www.amazon.com/Guitarmaking-Tradition-Technology-Guitar-Reference/dp/0811806405/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523510264&sr=1-1

I build about ten classical guitars following the instructions from that book. It's fun to read too. Lots of pictures!

If you want to learn to build guitars maybe think about getting a kit and trying that first, or build a dulcimer from a kit. Building a dulcimer will give you a basic idea of instrument construction.

First and foremost be super patient with yourself and get some band-aids.

Also, don't try and make your living as a luthier! :P I struggled for years until I came to my senses and got a normal job.

Serious Electric Bass. My good friend who mostly plays upright nowadays gave it to me. I haven't really gotten around to playing through it all, but it seems like a REALLY good book.

This is one of the most useful books I've come across. Lots of great tips to make your life easier and very easy to read and follow. I use it as a quick reference all the time.

Guitar Player Repair Guide https://www.amazon.com/dp/0879302917/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_VF3fzb9TE2BB0

This one is pretty good if you want to work on your metal chops:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Alex-Webster-Extreme-Metal-Bass/1423497155/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502821320&sr=8-1&keywords=extreme+metal+bass

If you want to work on some actual songs from different artists/bands, the "bass recorded versions"-series from Hal Leonard is pretty nice:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=bass+recorded+versions

I recommend trying a technique book. I use Kitharologus: The Path to Virtuosity by Ricardo Iznaola because I think it covers a lot of the really in-depth skills needed for playing. And it's good for discovering your individual flaws, as you seem to have already noticed, so you can use the exercises to improve those flaws.

I know this doesn't address your specific question, but I believe Kitharologus is one of the best technique books out there.

The latest incarnation of the Royal Conservatory Guitar Series are published by Fredrick Harris. Look for the Bridges series in the guitar section. They are the graded repertoire books for those doing their RCM examinations (here in Canada). The books are great. I use them with my students regardless if i have them doing the exams. They are not specifically devised for learning to sight read, just good broad ranging repertiore arranged by difficulty. For sight reading, Robert Benedict's books are good. For technique and nail advice check out Scott Tennant's, Pumping Nylon... cheesy title... great book!

Dan Erlewine's book comes pretty highly regarded and it recommends against a straight neck in favor of a slight relief. I'm surprised to find this so controversial here.

http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Player-Repair-Guide-Erlewine/dp/0879302917

I came up learning before the internet was big (like pre high speed where video wasn't a super viable option, and content wasn't so much in regular people's hands) and spent a lot of time reading books, articles, and message boards.

Dan Erlewine became my biggest teacher in books and This book was my bible for a while.

I originally started getting into it after getting the third degree by a mom-and-pop shop when I brought a bass in for repair that I didn't buy there, but when my friends in school would see the things I was doing, they'd ask me to work on their stuff too.

Been a while since I've actually had to wrench on anything guitar wise, but I still keep up with some of the new stuff coming out and browse new catalogs when I get them in the mail.

Edit: I also had the first edition of this book and it seemed to be more related to guys who play and are just getting into working on their own stuff.

Nice! I got Bass Fitness and Serious Electric Bass a few weeks ago and have been slowly working through them.

I got Serious Electric Bass without realizing the exercises aren't tabbed out. I've been meaning to learn how to read music for a while now so I guess there's no better time than now!

Bass Fitness is a little tedious and you've got to be really dedicated to work through it, but the payoff is totally worth it.

I highly recommend both books. It'll be a while before I'm through with both of these, but I'll check out the book you mentioned too.

If you're going to learn Scruggs style, you might as well learn from the Master, Earl Scruggs and the 5 String Banjo. Its a great book.


Janet Davis also has some excellent teaching material. My personal favorite is Splitting the Licks which really breaks down how song are built.

There are tons of other resources out there, but those two are my favorites and the ones I've gotten the most from.

It's definitely worth it. It'll make you a more versatile musician able to communicate with other musicians better. I haven't read this book, but it looks like a good introduction to reading on guitar: http://www.amazon.com/Music-Reading-Guitar-Complete-Method/dp/0793581885/

There is a whole set of lessons online here that would probably be perfect for you:

• http://www.howtoplaypiano.ca/?page_id=67 (his Youtube page is: http://www.youtube.com/user/Lypur)
  
  Also checkout the links and discussions under "Getting Started as a Beginner" in the sidebar -------->.
  
  Although we don't have too many online resources like the one above. See the other information and links in the FAQ too.
  
  You could also get a book like this:
  http://www.amazon.com/Alfreds-Self-Teaching-Adult-Piano-Course/dp/0739052055/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1342832792&sr=8-3&keywords=teach+yourself+piano
  
  Ideally you could eventually pursuade your parents to pay for lessons or you could get a job and pay for it yourself haha. One of the keys to learning to do any activity is having someone who can guide you, give you feedback, answer questions, etc.

Depends on what you want to get out of it.

Are you wanting to write your own tunes? Then start with a little bit of music theory and apply that to playing (i.e.: play the A note everywhere on the board).

Are you wanting to join a band? Start looking at songs on sites like Ultimate-Guitar or Songsterr.

In the mean time, try to understand what you're doing. I bought this book at the recommendation of my teacher couple years ago and have to say, while some parts are a little dry, it will definitely get you going if you follow it: https://www.amazon.com/Serious-Electric-Bass-Complete-Contemporary/dp/1576238830/

3 hours would be great. It's mostly important that most of your practice is strategic and goal-oriented. There are good books out there about practicing well; check'em out.

Things you'd do well to practice/learn about other than sheer technique on your instrument: theory, ear training (be able to identify intervals and chords by ear), transcribing (writing down music by ear), walking bass, sight-singing and rhythm skills.

One good book I was fortunate to discover in high school (maybe early college?) is Chuck Sher's The Improvisor's Bass Method. It doesn't hold your hand too much, but it'd give you lots of ways to practice and think about scales as well as ideas of things to look for more resources on online.

If you are thinking about that book, (which I do like, and used with many of my adult students) - I'd suggest getting this instead. It's exactly the same book but the left hand pages contain advice on things a piano teacher would be looking out for if you had one. It's not the same as actual lessons, but it's a big improvement over just guessing.

If it's anything like this , it can be so helpful. I use this Beatles book almost daily, and I like having to determine on my own what melodic notes fit into simplified chords, adding my own scribbles to the shortened pages.. Get's the job down, listeners seem happy enough with the summarized song.

If you can't get a teacher, then try a method book. There is one developed for adults by Alfred that you can find on Amazon. Using something structured will really pay dividends for you as getting your left hand to work is one of the first challenges of being a (right handed) pianist. Even as a child, I remember struggling initially with my left hand and all these years later my RH is definitely more dextrous than my LH. You'll need to initially spend maybe 4 times the time practicing your LH then you spend on your RH for the same section. In time though, you brain will get used to guiding your LH. Also, psychologically, try not to think of this as 'hand independence' - you don't want your hands to be independent, you want them to collaborate together to produce a single piece of music. Goo luck

Alright, let me give you a rundown of my personal library.

Beginner:

• "Guitar World Presents: Steve Vai's Guitar Workout"
  
• "A Modern Method for Guitar: Volumes 1-4" By William Leavitt
  
• "Creative Guitar Volume 1" by Guthrie Govan
  
  Intermediate:
  
  
• "Reading Studies for Guitar" by William Leavitt
  
• "The Advancing Guitarist" by Mick Goodrick
  
• "Melody Chords for Guitar" by Allan Holdsworth
  
• "Joe Pass Chord Solos"
  
• "Charlie Parker for Guitar"
  
• "Hybrid Picking for Guitar" by Gustavo Assis-Brasil
  
• "The Jazz Theory Book" by Mark Levine
  
• "The Bill Evans Guitar Book" by Sid Jacobs
  
  Advanced:
  
  
• "The Brazilian Guitar Book" by Nelson Faria
  
• "Creative Chordal Harmony for Guitar: Using Generic Modal Compression" by Tim Miller, Mick Goodrick
  
• "The Art of Two-Line Improvisation" by Jimmy Wyble
  
• "Elementary Training for Musicians" by Paul Hindemith (not guitar specific)
  
  I'm sure others will disagree with my ranking, and obviously my library is rather genre specific. But it's a lot of quality material that will definitely improve your playing no matter the style.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Contemporary-Travis-Picking/dp/0936799005/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395775616&sr=8-1&keywords=mark+hanson

Best beginning book I found when starting out and encourages use of the ring finger like you described. With practice it will get you going.

I got The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook and just played through a bunch of stuff. The book is great -- has the chords for all their songs. I'm not sure I could play any of their songs from memory, but flipping through this book and just playing whatever is a lot of fun. Probably the only song by any of the Beatles that I have memorized is "Working Class Hero."

Is it Progressive Guitar Method Book 1 possibly? I haven't done much book-based learning, other than for my forays into classical method, so I can't comment on that book specifically. I can say that if you are interested in learning not only the fretboard but also standard notation, check out Sight Reading for the Classical Guitar, Level I-II. Going through the exercises will definitely help imprint in your mind the notes of the fretboard in various positions.

You learn by experimenting and studying other amps. Merlin's books are very good.
merlin's books
Also there is another book that is
Tube amp handbook
and
Tube amp book
As for forums, ultimate guitar's diy section, and harmony central. amp garage ect. There are a ton of forums dedicated to just building amps.

Chuck Sher's The Improvisor's Bass Method: For Electric & Acoustic Bass is good.

Honestly, my usual recommendation is to buy a keyboard and try to take some piano lessons. The ideas of theory translate really well to keys. Then once you understand them well, you can transfer that knowledge to other instruments.

Excellent Stuff by Ervin Somogyi

The Responsive Guitar

Voicing the Guitar DVD

Older but still Excellent
Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology

Basically a step by step for a steel string
Build Your Own Acoustic Guitar: Complete Instructions and Full-Size Plans

Edit: Formatting

Jody Fisher’s Complete Method for Jazz Guitar

I own around 20 guitar books. This one is the best for getting a comprehensive overview of what you should know to start and grow with jazz guitar IMHO. then other books are good for supplementing specific concepts that you find along the way.

I recommend reading basic exercises in higher positions. That's the best way I've found. That said - I do like these two sight reading books:

Sight Reading Classical Guitar Levels I-III


Sight Reading Classical Guitar Levels IV-V

They appear really basic but there is more to them than meets the eye as far as phrasing, musicality and rhythms go. I read the first volume all in higher positions for the challenge. The second volume has upper position playing and covers a lot of common classical guitar styles in short snippets. I have them both and they are both worth checking out.

This book: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Contemporary-Travis-Picking/dp/0936799005/

It's fantastic. I've purchased it three times, I keep giving my copy away to friends who ask about getting started with Fingerstyle.

The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking by Mark Hanson was really helpful for me. If you're interested in the Travis picking style, this could do you good!

It'll be hard to develop by looking at complicated, long pieces. You need to practice the underlying structure. (Just like it's hard to get better at figure drawing just by learning how to draw shadows and texture or slowly tracing finished pieces.)

I've been using this series, and it's been going pretty well:
http://www.amazon.com/Sight-Reading-Classical-Guitar-Level/dp/0769209742

You'll want to start by learning the Travis picking patterns, and once you have all those patterns comfortably memorized, you'll start to naturally break out of them as you seek memorable melodies that harmonize your favorite chords.

While nothing beats at least some lessons when starting out, just to get the right approach on your technique going early on, you can learn a lot on your own.

I personally went through the free lessons over at StudyBass.com, and picked up a few books: Serious Electric Bass by Joel Di Bartolo and Improvisor's Bass Method by Chuck Sher. There are of course other books that are well received and would benefit you.

For a more generic advice, try to get a practice routine going, and keep it consistent. Start out slow, with a metronome, and really focus on how your notes sound, how long they last.

If you have any more specific questions, ask away!

The Modern Method books are good but Leavitt's Sight Reading Studies For Guitar are great for practicing positional sight reading.

Once I felt I had hit the wall of what I could figure out by ear, I picked up (and had a lot of luck with) this book. It's the one that Earl Scruggs wrote, and it's very well paced. I might even suggest starting out with it, because I ended up having to do a lot of right hand reprogramming.

Well, with no song structure and no harmonic or melodic element to the music, it makes sense that the bass would do lot of repetitive rhythmic stuff. I don't know of many bass players who regularly jam with a drum circle, so I don't think the whole set-up is common. But I'd guess your reaction would be - it's not super interesting or satisfying to play along with the same rhythm for 20 minutes.

Some ideas:

• Get some crazy effects going and have fun soloing
  
• Play longer chord sequences (12 bar blues, Autumn Leaves, Summertime, etc) and see if the others pick up on the changes
  
• This book will help you with new ideas:
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Improvisors-Bass-Method-Electric-Acoustic/dp/0961470100
  
  
• Get some other harmony/melody instruments involved to give you some interaction on those levels

The CAGED system is HOW you integrate those two, which explains your 2nd question. As for the first one, chord shapes are just open chords moved around the fretboard. You'll have to look up the pentatonic scale chart on the internet for the scale, and it's comprised of 5 different shapes. One book I'd recommend is Guthrie Govan's Creative Guitar I. There are other ways to obtain it too, if that's what you want.

I'm not asking you to NOT study the CAGED system. What I was trying to say in my previous post is that CAGED requires a lot of time to understand let alone execute it because it requires you to know the fretboard considerably well AND dexterity of your finger. I've seen a lot of people setting their bars too high only to abandon them altogether. You said you were fairly new, right? You can try it if you want and I wish you all the best.

I built one using this book

http://www.amazon.com/GUITARMAKING-Guitar-Reference-Jonathan-Natelson/dp/0811806405

Its really a great walkthrough with nice pictures and descriptions. I really didn't need any major power tools either.

>Is it important to know how to read music or understand music theory?

Yes. This book is will teach you to read music. It's a pretty common beginner book.

https://www.amazon.com/Mel-Bays-Modern-Guitar-Method/dp/0871663546

sounds like you're half way there. def check the key sig before first, then find one of the 'caged' chord scale positions that suits the range. if the melody gets high or goes below the reach or your position, choose another or get comfortable switching to another one for extra range.
pay attention to the hard keys for guitar, ie = Eb, Ab, Db etc

check out the book; [modern guitar method book 1], (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Books-Modern-Guitar-Method-Grade-1/dp/0871663546/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1451826120&sr=8-1&keywords=mel+bay+modern+guitar+method)
there's a play along dvd that's really handy also.

This is 'the' book IMO:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Improvisors-Bass-Method-Guitar/dp/0961470100/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1502853916&sr=1-6&keywords=chuck+sher

Right now you might be like "Dang motherfucker. I told you I was a rock/metal bassist. What's this improvisational jazz shit?". Well this book will do a bunch of things to make you a much better heavy bassist, and a better musician in general. For starters it'll force you to learn bass clef, and theory from basic to advanced. By the time you're done with this book, you'll be kicking literal arse in every conceivable genre. Take it from another, albeit former, metal bassist, this is the book you want to get your paws on.

That would be Extreme Metal Bass.

I haven't read it myself, but I'd heard a lot of very good things about it if you're playing within the style.

I bought this book and have been slowly going through it.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0739066374/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/177-1392342-1784740

It really gives you focus for practicing. It's not always fun and it seems like a lot of information to digest at a time but it's definitely worth it.

If you want to learn about guitar amps I highly recommend this book. It's really easy to understand and can take you from 0-100 in guitar amp electronics

Creative Guitar by Guthrie Govan. Great book, well written, not to long, and basically covers everything a student of guitar should know, including all the theory that will be relevant to a non-jazz guitarist, and how it relates to the guitar.

I picked up a copy of Earl Scruggs 5 String Banjo and so far I like it, I have weekly lessons so I don't rely on it heavily - though I think I could.

Good luck!

I'm always surprised at how many people recommend pumping nylon and nobody ever recommends Kitharologos from Ricardo Iznaola. That book covers the entirety of modern technique.

http://www.amazon.com/Kitharologus-Path-Virtuosity-Ricardo-Iznaola/dp/0786617748


(Though I do admit that I've never seen PN)

I'm in the same situation as you. 39 and been playing since I was 11 and now want to learn some real theory and how to read music. I decided to get some resources and created a practice routine 1-2 hours a day. Here are the simple things I have been using the last 6 months and noticed real improvement.

Chord wheel app for my phone
Chord Chemistry by Ted Greene
Book of scales
MI Music Theory For Guitar
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0793581885/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474086489&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=reading+music+for+guitar&dpPl=1&dpID=61KkYuMxBZL&ref=plSrch

Guthrie Govan's books are great. I'd suggest book 1 for theory, book 2 for application of fretboard theory for advanced techniques.

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Guitar-Cutting-Edge-Tech/dp/1860744621

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Guitar-Advanced-Techniques-Vol/dp/1860744672

You should check out the YouTube channel Let's Talk About Math Rock. It's a pretty good resource on learning the fundamentals of math rock.

Also, check out the book Creative Guitar 1.

I've been interested in building my own guitar for a few years now. I started seriously looking into it during my senior year of high school, and bought this book.

I plan to (at some point in the next few years) build an electric guitar. I want to build it completely from scratch, so I don't want to buy a neck.

What are the most important tips you wish you had known when you first started building?

This Book is absolutely the bomb and will take you from zero knowledge to advanced by simply following it (Jody Fisher Complete Jazz Method)

There's instrument-specific books and websites for that. A lot of people on /r/guitarlessons talk about justinguitar.com Some stress fretboard knowledge, the CAGED system and connecting pentatonics and other scales up the neck more than traditional theory. Ultiately it's about visualizing pentatonic blocks and tetrachord boxes running up the neck and having the LH hit them. I recommend Tom Kolb's theory book, and Guthrie Govan's books (which i remember seeing for $4 in Half Price books), you can read reviews on amazon. THE MI books by Clement and Capuzzo are pretty good. The popular jazz guitar books by Fewell, Fisher, Baker, etc contain crash courses on essential chord shapes and typical sequences

http://justinguitar.com/en/SC-000-Scales.php

http://www.amazon.com/Fretboard-Knowledge-Contemporary-Guitarist-Clement/dp/0739031570/

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Guitar-Cutting-Edge-Tech/dp/1860744621

Don't try and speed up the process, it takes a long time and steady practice.

Get this book;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sight-Reading-Classical-Guitar-Level/dp/0769209742/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375442256&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=sight+read+classical+guitar

And then when you have finished that one, get this one;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sight-Reading-Classical-Guitar-Level/dp/0769212859/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1375442279&sr=8-2-fkmr1&keywords=sight+read+classical+guitar

And then you should feel confident to play most things.
After those books, I'd recommend folk and bluegrass sheet music as the timings are quite simple (mostly triplets or 16ths throughout).

Jazz and the like will be much harder to read but you'll get there IF you practice.

Try this! I'm still a beginner with the bluegrass style as well, and Earl Scruggs knows his shit and teaches it really well. It's like a little banjo bible :)

Stewmac sells plans, as does GAL.

Ukulele would definitely be easier for a first build.

Guitarmaking by Cumpiano and Natelson is The Book with all the info needed to build classical and steel-string acoustics with either dovetailed or pinned neck joints..

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I highly recommend this Mel Bay's book to begin with. Once you get a fair way into that book, begin to look at A Modern Method of Guitar and the Carcassi book if you can find it. If you get through these books, you will be a monster at sightreading guitar sheet music!

This is probably the best place to start: http://www.amazon.com/Guitarmaking-Tradition-Technology-Guitar-Reference/dp/0811806405

this is a great book. helped me learn a lot of different techniques.

http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Player-Repair-Guide-Erlewine/dp/0879302917

Dan Erlewine is one of the all time great guitar technicians and his book is a priceless tome of guitar knowledge.

It's hard to give recommendations unless we know what you're capable of.

You could pick up Alex Webster's book as a nice place to start.

The Complete Jazz Guitarist

Even if you aren't a jazz person, this is a great set of books to expand your musical knowledge and forces you to actually read notation. It actually forces you to learn from the ground up, instead of just teaching you enough to get by. It might not be the most entertaining to a beginner, but it helped me immensely after I'd been playing for some time

I'm all about this book

http://www.amazon.com/The-Improvisors-Bass-Method-Electric/dp/0961470100

But like everyone is saying, learn scales (and modes), arpege, and bass lines. Transcribe lines, play with records and people.

Try to focus on the I and V (this is a very general rule, don't feel grounded by it) when constructing your lines. Always be in time. Yada Yada Yada

As someone who's actually hand cut/measured a fret-board once, I will never do it again. I used the standard Fender scale length for reference. The problem with it is the required degree of accuracy needed to successfully produce a properly tuned fret board. It's painstakingly slow. I used this particular book and it's fantastically well written. It covers how to literally build a guitar from scratch, including winding pickups, making a fret board, and even how to make a truss rod (that bit that runs down the middle of the inside of the neck). I built one for a school science project out of only things readily available from a hardware store (save the strings, also not an electric for the sake of time) and it was surprisingly good, but hard to tune.

Man - that's a rather tough Beatles song actually. I have a feeling if you buy that one song book of their's, and a capo you could likely play most of their other songs. There's only a few that stick out in my mind that are near the amount of dexterity required to play Norwegian Wood.

Make sure they have a smaller size guitar. Most seven-year-olds can't comfortably play a 4/4 size guitar. a 2/3 or 3/4 might suit them better.

There's plenty of books aimed at young guitarists. It would be a good idea to grab one or more of those and look at the material. They basically start you off with single-note lines and open chords.

You should also get them started with reading sheet music. Kids will learn it just as easily as they would learn reading tabs, but learning to read sheet music will come in handy throughout their life.

Mel Bay's Guitar Method is a classic. It also includes teacher/student duets that are appropriate for beginners.

Other than that teaching kids just requires a lot of patience.

As an addition to all the tips, I highly recommend picking up Alex Webster's Extreme Metal Bass. Helped me a lot in developing my 3 finger playing technique, and a must read for all extreme metal bass players.

Kitharologus: The Path to Virtuosity by Ricardo Iznaola

Pumping Nylon by Scott Tennant

I also recommend reading Practicing: A Musician's Return to Music by Glenn Kurtz, it's all about the author's life as a disillusioned professional guitarist who gives up on music only to return to it later in life for his own enjoyment. Essential reading, especially if you ever think about quitting.

If you like Earl Scruggs playing style, I would suggest buying his book. Earl Scruggs and the 5-String Banjo: Revised and Enhanced Edition - Book with CD https://www.amazon.com/dp/0634060422/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_g2s4xbWYJWTET

I decided to make a guitar last December, and I have no prior woodworking or handyman knowledge. I used the Cumpiano book, which gives instructions on how to build a steel string and a classical guitar.

I am now pretty much done my guitar (a classical), just doing the french polishing steps, so I can tell you from experience that that book will tell you exactly what to do, albeit you'll need to apply some common sense now and again.

One thing I will mention is that I had to buy a fair amount of tools, mainly chisels, planes, rasps, sharpening equipment, etc. The book also tells you what you need to buy.

The "Complete Scores" book is pretty much unusable, given its size. Instead, get the "Beatles Complete Chords Songbook". The chords are very accurate and the book can be placed flat on a table or on a sheet music stand.

A lot of practice...

This book has tons of exercises for all your needs (fingerpicking, scales, finger strengthening, etc)

> but there's no equivalence there

Not sure what you're saying. The assertion is that CAGED, for reasons the author fails to articulate, produces "limited, amateurish, boring" playing. Govan is a counter example. Use knows CAGED, he teaches CAGED, he is neither limited creatively, amateurish, nor boring.

On the other hand, the guy dissing CAGED, who is selling an alternative commercially, is limited creatively, amateurish and boring, at least in all the public media I could find of the guy.

> I'm interested in hearing Guthrie's take. [..] I don't know of anything with him actually teaching it. Do you happen to have a link?

It's in his book Creative Guitar 1 - Cutting-Edge Techniques. It's used throughout the book, described early on, then referred to periodically as a bit of scaffolding to attach other things to. It's clear that it's part of his mental model of the fretboard.

https://www.amazon.ca/Earl-Scruggs-5-String-Banjo-Enhanced/dp/0634060430 Good resource for learning the banjo.

If you want a version you can carry around, most of this content looks like it was taken from this book:

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Beatles-Complete-Chord-Songbook/dp/0634022296

My brother build his acoustic (Spanish style) on this book. I also read it. Rally well done. Tells you everything you need to know and what tools to buy or build. Luthierie involves lots of making your own tools and jigs.

Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology (Guitar Reference) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0811806405/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_qdYXDbRJH8KWG

Back when we were building guitars, the place to buy supplies was LMI (Luthieier Mercantile) and StewMac (Stewart Macdonald). Now there are probably things to can buy on amazon.

I started with http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/087930863X/ref=mp_s_a_1?qid=1333598852&sr=8-1 and a baby will pcb http://guitaramplifierpcbs.com/liteiib.aspx and ended up with a nice amp. Begin simply and work your way up.

This is the banjo bible for complete beginners. I highly recommend getting this book.

Webster's book is kinda awesome.

Other than that, just take it as slow as you absolutely need to with a metronome and slowly up the speed over time. No magic to it, just work.

One final last recommendation. Don't drop 90$ on a rewire, drop 90$ on an epi valve junior (Tone for days) and learn to wire and setup your own guitar. There are many, many books available for this.

And you'll know your own guitar inside and out plus save $$ - which if you decide to be a fulltime musician will be a much much bigger deal.

It's in the Scruggs book. If you're looking to play Scruggs style banjo, this book is invaluable.

The Mickey Baker books are terrible without rooting around on the internet for supplemental material in the way of explanation. Shelve it and getting something that’s actually useful. Like this: Jazz Guitar, Complete Edition (Book & CD) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0739066374/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_jpuWAbXE3WE7X

Buy this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Contemporary-Travis-Picking-Fingerpicking/dp/0936799005/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266792788&sr=8-2-spell

It made a huge difference for me.

Here it is: https://www.amazon.com/Serious-Electric-Bass-Complete-Contemporary/dp/1576238830. BTW, you can preview the beginning of the book - it's actually Chapter 2 where the playing part starts.

It's a solid book that includes the covers The Beatles did. I have found a few inaccuracies though.
Moved onto The Complete Scores after starting with The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook.

Look on amazon for a general book on guitars, for example

Should be good enough. See my reply about scientific process, its what your teacher is doing.

In this instance the information is quite obvious but the exercise is still important.

This is the sort of level of info that you don't find really in scientific papers etc / a little more difficult.

However, a decent book on guitars will be a reliable enough source.

(http://www.amazon.ca/Beatles-Complete-Chord-Songbook/dp/0634022296)

I have this one, which is chords with lyrics.

http://www.amazon.com/Beatles-Complete-Chord-Songbook/dp/0634022296

Earl Scruggs and the 5 String Banjo is 160 pages. Perhaps you're thinking of Tony Trischka's The Complete 5 String Banjo?

Is it this one?

Two other method books to look into are Jazz Guitar - Jody Fisher and A Modern Method for Guitar - William Leavitt

My personnal recommandations (which is what I work with currently):

• For sight reading this and that.
  
• Etudes: Sor and Cassini
  
• Methods : Pumping Nylon and Kitharologus

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