Please recommend guitar books

[badshirt]

I've been playing by ear for about 14 years and am now learning soloing (finger positions), faster picking, the fretboard etc.. - trying to be a player.

I'm wondering which books can teach me or guide me on how to practice or what to work on to improve; you know practice with a purpose.

I've recorder basic progressions and have been soloing over them in 2 different positions so far. This gets tedious after a while and I'm looking for different types of practice techniques and content.

Thanks in advance!!!
pjk

[dkaplowitz]

Welcome to the forum!

If you only know two positions, then it would behoove you to learn the C-A-G-E-D system for learning scales. I did a cheesy lesson on it here (http://gnat-notes.com/lessons/caged/). Let me know if you have any questions.

Jack Zucker's "Sheets of Sound" would also probably be pretty good. He sells it to forum members at a discount...do a search on his name or the title of the book. It's full of great exercises that will help you bust your rut.

If you want more recommendations, come back with some more detail and I'm sure you'll get a ton more.

Good luck!

Dave

[dkaplowitz]

P.S. I almost forgot! I'd also very highly recommend Tomo Fujita's video "Accelerate Your Guitar Playing". Regardless of your level of skill, this is a very good video for getting strong fundamental skills as a player.

[badshirt]

Excellent. If anybody has more I would love to hear them.
I'm stepping away for a few hours. I'd love to hear from anybody who has a suggestion on what they used to elevate their playing.

[Tom Gross]

Yeah, I'd give a + to the CAGED system for someone in your shoes. It'll give you the whole neck, tie together chords, scales & arpeggios, and eventually get away from positions.
Good link here:

http://www.highcountryguitar.com/caged.htm

[-kk-]

I'll second the 'sheets of sound' suggestion, but would like to add that with any book/DVD, you'll obviously need some level of discipline to soldier through the material.

If you can, a teacher is highly recommended.

[-kk-]

Originally posted by Tom Gross
Yeah, I'd give a + to the CAGED system for someone in your shoes. It'll give you the whole neck, tie together chords, scales & arpeggios, and eventually get away from positions.
Good link here:

http://www.highcountryguitar.com/caged.htm

great site!

[lhallam]

Last year Jack posted a similar thread and another guy compiled the answers in a list. There may be some duplicates.

Here ya go:

BOOKS

Joe Pass Guitar Style

Shawn Lane Power Licks

Charlie Parker Omnibook

Pat Metheny Songbook

Albert Lee Starlicks Sessions

The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine.

Ted Greene - Chord Chemistry

Styles for the Studio - Leon White

Joe Pass Guitar Style

Shawn Lane Power Licks

Charlie Parker Omnibook

The Martino vids transcription books

jack Z-Sheets Of Sound

The Wes Montgomery transcription book by Steve Khan, well, and his transcritions of martino as well.

Any transcribed Coltrane stuff

Holdsworth Reach For The Uncommon Chord

The Albert Lee REH vids

Scott Henderson's chord grips

The REH vids of Brent Mason and Michael Lee Firkins

The Carl Verheyen REH vid

The Brett Garsed REH vid

Henderson's Phrasing vid

Ted Greene - Chord Chemistry

Mick Goodrick - The Advancing Guitarist

George Van Eps - Harmonic Mechanisms for the Guitar series

William Leavitt - A Modern Method for the Guitar series

Steve Khan - Contemporary Chord Khancepts

Mark Levine - The Jazz Theory Book

George Russell - The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization

well for jazz, I would say:

Improvising Jazz and Patterns for Jazz by Jerry Coker (2 different books)

Intervallic Improvisation by Walt Wieskopf

The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine

Charlie Parker for Guitar (not sure about author)

Chromatic Approach to Improvisation by David Liebman

Joey Goldstein's book (which is really fabulous by the way).

Mick Goodrick's book

Jack Grassel's three book series of jazz guitar transcriptions.

Wolfe Marshall's Jazz Guitar transcriptions

Jimmy Bruno No Nonsense Jazz guitar

Wolf Marshall's Best of Jazz Guitar

Wolf Marshall's Pat Martino Signature licks.

Ted Greene's books.

Frank Gambale's books on speed picking and theory.

Dave Baker bebop books

The Advancing Guitarist

Mickey Baker Jazz books.

For beginning rock - Rock Guitar by Happy and Artie Traum

For fingerpicking - Fingerpicking Styles For Guitar By Happy Traum

For Classical - Andres Segovia Studies For Guitar by Ferndando Sor

Carcassi Studies.

Paul Hindemith Craft of Musical Composition: Book One and Two

Materials and Structure of Music by Christ, Delone, Kliewer, Rowell, Thompson

Polyrhythms by Peter Magadini

The David L Burge series - Relative Pitch and Perfect Pitch Courses

Reading and Writing Music by Dave Stewart - only know by reputation but hear it's good. Dave is a great composer and keyboardist.

Emily Remler's videos.

Hal Galper's Forward Motion

Mark Levine's Jazz Theory

Dave Liebman's Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony and Melody

Scott Henderson's Melodic Phrasing

Dave Creamer's Advanced Arpeggio/Scale Relationships

Jack Zucker's Sheets of Sound

Band-In-A-Box

Chop Shop

A book version of Ronnie Earl's Playing Blues with Soul along with an accompanying DVD.

The Advancing Guitarist- Mick Goodrick

Advanced Aprpeggio/Scale relationships- Dave Creamer

John Abercrombie's Homespun video

Ted Greene's Modern Chord progressions (Great study of voice leading)

Progressive Steps To Syncopation For The Modern Drummer (rhythm exercises to adapt to guiitar)

Forward Motion by Hal Galper
http://www.halgalper.com

Effortless Mastery by Ken Werner

Frank Gambale's "Speed Picking" is also very good.

Joe Diorio's Intervallic Designs?

Kreutzer 42 Studies or Caprices

Fabulous studies for developing picking technique.

"120 daily guitar studies for the right hand by
Mauro Giuliani"

"SOLFEGE"

"Modern Reading Text in4/4 by Louis Bellson"

"The techique of the flute/chord studies"

[dkaplowitz]

Originally posted by lhallam
Hindenmouth (sp?) 16th Century Part Writing Theory - I think is what it's called.
Paul Hindemith. He also wrote "Elementary Training for Musicians" which most modern musicians would be blown away by. The exercises in this book are insanely difficult. Amazing that at one time it's possible that this stuff was really "elementary" to some people.

Originally posted by lhallam
Materials and Structure of Music by Christ, Delone, Kliewer, Rowell, Thompson
I didn't know Christ wrote music. Cool stuff man! ;)

[lhallam]

Originally posted by dkaplowitz
Paul Hindemith. He also wrote "Elementary Training for Musicians" which most modern musicians would be blown away by. The exercises in this book are insanely difficult. Amazing that at one time it's possible that this stuff was really "elementary" to some people.


I didn't know Christ wrote music. Cool stuff man! ;)

Thanks, I just couldn't remember it, I'll edit my spelling.

That Christ book was from my Freshman year 1973.

[dkaplowitz]

Lance, great list, btw. I'd like to add some to that list...(and do some lame-o reviews of the ones I know). I'll peruse the books I have and post it up when I get a chance.

[lhallam]

Originally posted by dkaplowitz
Lance, great list, btw. I'd like to add some to that list...(and do some lame-o reviews of the ones I know). I'll peruse the books I have and post it up when I get a chance.

Just to be clear, many members of TGP posted their faves, another put them all into one post and then I just copied it into a spreadsheet.

I'm looking forward to adding your contribution to my spreadsheet.

[badshirt]

I've been a bit stagnant and struggling to advance and find ways to make practice times that count (like I said).
I'm going to start off with the Tomo Accelerate Your playing DVD first. I'll chime in later.

Thanks again, guys!!!

[KRosser]

I don't spend a lot of time in music/guitar books these days (though I am still working through the Van Eps below, VERY slowly), these have been pretty important for me at one time or another:

Chord Chemistry - Ted Greene
The Advancing Guitarist - Mick Goodrick
Patterns for Jazz - Jerry Coker
Masters of the Telecaster - Arlen Roth
20th Century Harmony - Vincent Persichetti
Polyrythmns - Pete Magadini
Drum Wisdom - Bob Moses
Thesaurus Of Scales & Melodic Patterns - Nicolas Slonimsky
Harmonic Mechanisms, Vols 1-3 - George Van Eps
Exploring Jazz Guitar - Jim Hall
Improvisation - Derek Bailey
Arcana - Various, edited by John Zorn
The Harvard Dictionary Of Music
Reading Studies for Guitar - William Levitt
Advanced Reading Studies for Guitar - William Levitt
Musics of Many Cultures - Various, edited by Elizabeth May
The Shaping Forces Of Music - Ernst Toch
Brazilian Guitar - Nelson Faria
Intervallic Patterns - Joe Diorio
Linear Expressions - Pat Martino
Pumping Nylon - Scott Tennant
The Art Of Practicing - Alice Artzt
+ Lenny Breau & Ralph Towner's books, both of the names of which escape me at the moment and I'm too lazy to get up and look....


I'm not a big fan of transcription books, sorry. I'd rather lift things off of CD's myself.

[StevenA]

I have owned or looked at most of the selections posted so far but one which seems to be missing is

CREATIVE CHORD SUBSTITUTION by Eddie Arkin

Of all the books I own, this one is most falling apart from overusage. The best chapters on secondary dominants and fouth chord subs I have ever seen. Does anyone care to guess what the tritone of Em11 is? Hint: It's not a b5 above!

Steven

[jzucker]

Where do you get the Dave Creamer stuff?

Anyone have any of his old recordings? He plays differently now but back in the '70s he was an amazing wide-interval player.

[dkaplowitz]

Originally posted by jzucker
Where do you get the Dave Creamer stuff?
http://www.davecreamer.com/

[jzucker]

Originally posted by dkaplowitz
http://www.davecreamer.com/

Interesting. I wish he'd do a book on the intervallic stuff. Do you have his book? How is it? The description sounds very similar to my dodecaphonics stuff.

[dkaplowitz]

I don't have it. Based on the description it sounds like somewhat of a concatenation of chord/scale relationships, which I already have a number of books on. I may get it b/c I am almost as much a collector of these books as a student of the material, though.

Have you checked out any of Verheyen intervallic books? I was thinking of picking one of those up next. My memory fails me but I seem to recall reading about some other book oriented toward intervallic playing, but I can't remember. Could be the Verheyen book I'm thinking of.

[dkaplowitz]

This (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/082582897X/ref=reg_hu-wl_item-added/102-2581622-8820952?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance) is the other one I saw online recently that I was thinking about.

Does anyone know anything about these "grimoire" books? I've heard a lot of hype about them, but when I stumbled onto one of the chord books in the series, it was just a really dull looking chord book with what seemed very little discourse regarding usage. Would appreciate any opinions/comparisons. Thanks!

Dave

[KRosser]

I don't know Verheyen's or David Creamer's books, but Joe Diorio's Intervallic Designs has some wide interval stuff that's pretty good.

This is kind of an easy subject to take on by yourself, without a book, in two ways:

1) For the more methodical types: Practice playing scales in intervals in four directions - up (C-E, D-F, E-G...), down (E-C, F-D, G-E...), alternating up then down (C-E, F-D, E-G, A-F..) and alternating down then up (E-C, D-F, G-E, F-A...). Go for rhythmic & dynamic evenness and a smooth connection from one tone to the next over speed, especially at first. Start with diatonic 3rds (the examples I gave above...), then 4ths, etc, work your way up to octaves, 9ths, 10th's etc.

2) Take a Charlie Parker melody, or any similar type of line, and practice it with octave displacements of some of the notes, for example, the opening line of Donna Lee that goes G-AB-G in half steps can go G-down a major 7th to Ab-back up to the first G, etc. I studied for a while with a tenor saxophonist who was WAY into this technique and actually had me write out octave-displaced re-arrangements of bebop heads and had me practice them like I would any other head melody. So there, a lesson I payed $50 for, for y'all for free...

I'd also recommend checking out the Bach Partitas & Sonatas for solo violin, they're cheap and easily available, and many of them are single lines with lots of great intervallic/arpeggio stuff and some really beautiful music to boot and a nice but accessible challenge to play on electric guitar with a pick...

[dkaplowitz]

I don't know Verheyen's or David Creamer's books, but Joe Diorio's Intervallic Designs has some wide interval stuff that's pretty good.

This is kind of an easy subject to take on by yourself, without a book, in two ways:

1) For the more methodical types: Practice playing scales in intervals in four directions - up (C-E, D-F, E-G...), down (E-C, F-D, G-E...), alternating up then down (C-E, F-D, E-G, A-F..) and alternating down then up (E-C, D-F, G-E, F-A...). Go for rhythmic & dynamic evenness and a smooth connection from one tone to the next over speed, especially at first. Start with diatonic 3rds (the examples I gave above...), then 4ths, etc, work your way up to octaves, 9ths, 10th's etc.

2) Take a Charlie Parker melody, or any similar type of line, and practice it with octave displacements of some of the notes, for example, the opening line of Donna Lee that goes G-AB-G in half steps can go G-down a major 7th to Ab-back up to the first G, etc. I studied for a while with a tenor saxophonist who was WAY into this technique and actually had me write out octave-displaced re-arrangements of bebop heads and had me practice them like I would any other head melody. So there, a lesson I payed $50 for, for y'all for free...

I'd also recommend checking out the Bach Partitas & Sonatas for solo violin, they're cheap and easily available, and many of them are single lines with lots of great intervallic/arpeggio stuff and some really beautiful music to boot and a nice but accessible challenge to play on electric guitar with a pick...
Great advice! Thanks!

The Bird head octave displacement idea is pretty cool. I find the head to Donna Lee challenging as it's written. I'm gonna try it octave displaced. It must sound cool as hell.

[Tomo]

I've been a bit stagnant and struggling to advance and find ways to make practice times that count (like I said).
I'm going to start off with the Tomo Accelerate Your playing DVD first. I'll chime in later.

Thanks again, guys!!!

Thanks. You don't have to do all in order... pick a few from section one and please practice really slow. Set your amp really bright so you can hear unwanted noises from your fingers, open strings... Make sure that you work on
Rt 3 7 forms over changes. Ex19... You can apply this idea into any jazz standard tunes. Record your comping and practice melody, soloing ideas over your comping. Enjoy it!

PS, Practice Ex15 with counting... 1 2 3 4 or 1&2&3&4&...
Use different chords... replace the original idea.

Tomo
Tomo

[1-Take-Wonder]

http://www.highcountryguitar.com/caged.htm


cool summary...I've been using bits and pieces of CAGED for myself and for others for years but have never owned the Fretboard Logic pubs...there were a couple of "I'm such a dummy" revelations from this site. Maybe I should go ahead and get the series...:jo

[fr8_trane]

I've been playing by ear for about 14 years and am now learning soloing (finger positions), faster picking, the fretboard etc.. - trying to be a player.

I'm wondering which books can teach me or guide me on how to practice or what to work on to improve; you know practice with a purpose.

I've recorder basic progressions and have been soloing over them in 2 different positions so far. This gets tedious after a while and I'm looking for different types of practice techniques and content.


OK, from the original post it seems half of the instructional material offered so far is going to be over his head. Lets try to narrow it down.

For practicing fundamental technique with tons of exercises:
Accelerate your guitar playing
Sheets of sound

For theory:
A book on the caged system
Frank gambale's technique book 1 (a very concise breakdown of the most common soloing approaches)

Learning aids:
metronome
phrase trainer like the amazing slow downer
Band in the box accompaniment software
Fretboard warrior. A flash based free program that teaches you the location of every note on the guitar. http://www.francoisbrisson.com/fretboardwarrior/fretboardwarrior.html

Some helpful websites:
Free online ear trainer http://www.good-ear.com/servlet/EarTrainer
Free online metronome http://www.metronomeonline.com/
Free lessons http://www.fenderplayersclub.com/
Fantastic theory lessons http://chrisjuergensen.com.hosting.domaindirect.com/lessons.htm?ID=1047
More great theory http://www.chordmaps.com/

[krbentley]

Brett Wilmont's theory and Harmony book from Mel Bay is a great resource.

[Tomo]

Brett Wilmont's theory and Harmony book from Mel Bay is a great resource.


Yes,Guitarmony is very popular class at Berklee. John Thomas's voice leading book is really good! (Berklee Press) If you are interested in jazzy voicings.

Berklee Modern Guitar Method 1 is still great book. It's nice to go through a few times. If you get good skills.. then it's easy to read whole book.

Tomo

[Yngtchie Blacksteen]

Guthrie Govan - Creative Guitar 1 & 2