Classical Guitar (Absolute Beginners) Paperback – 1 April 2003

This is a great book for absolute beginners, beginners, and as an introduction to classical guitar playing. It's also useful to have a CD of the exercises, the demo and backing music, so you can have a go, when you are ready, as to how it should sound. Scarborough Fair seems to be my favourite piece! I have moved on to a more advanced book, but keep going back to this one for more practice, at sight reading and making a better sound. A good buy.

I'm brand new to classical guitar, having played a little bit of acoustic steel stringed guitar in the past, but only at a very basic beginners level. I've decided to try learning some classical now though for something different, so bought this book and a couple of others to help me get started. This is a really decent book for an absolute beginner. It has some good photos showing you correct positions, how to sit etc, and goes into the basics, enough that you'd need to know to get started but explained in a straightforward way. The next part of the book is basically teaching you the most important basic notes one string at a time on the guitar. With each new string that gets introduced you have a couple of exercises to practice playing the music and reading the notes, and there's tabs underneath the music that you can practice filling in if you want, but I'm not bothering with that because the way things are explained gradually its not difficult to learn to read the actual music. You get a couple of exercises to practice the new notes, and some really basic songs to practice what you've learned, so as you learn more notes as you add in more strings the songs get a bit more difficult because they include the new notes to practice. Its a really basic beginners book for absolute beginners, and it just gives you a basic introduction to it and by the end of it you can play a few really basic versions of some songs. Its good for what it is, although I've taken a star off full marks because I would have liked it to go a bit further and teach me a bit more. I think I'll be finished this book within about a week because there's not much in it. I pick things up really quickly though to be fair and am not new to music, having played another instrument for many years. So maybe its more than enough for someone completely new to music in general. I'm a bit disappointed that this book won't last me long, but to be fair it will have taught me all the basics, got me started and playing and able to read all the main notes.

Great

Good to work through from the beginning and gradually improve in technique

Having come back to the guitar after giving up for a while, this proved to be a refreshing new approach toteaching the instrument. I once took a postal course (that dates me a bit!), which though very thorough wasplodding and old-fashioned. This is lively, largely pictorial, with the text brisk and informative. The illustrationsare especially helpful in exactly pinpointing each section, from reading music up to playing tunes in which I feltI was making real progress. The best part is the way each of the six strings is dealt with, incorporating simplepieces like La Paloma and Romanza as exercises. I recommend this for anyone who wants a fresh, modernapproach to the classical guitar.

A good intro` for the beginner. Doesn`t `snow you under` with `over your head ` stuff. Gives you the basics required to make a start with confidence. It won`t take you far but it really is ideal to get a beginner up and running. I like it !

Great.......easy to follow for an absolute beginner.

A good book to get you started, but the one thing that irritated me beyond belief are the tabs for the tunes. I really don't need to be filling in the numbers myself to help me to learn. I just want to crack on with playing a jolly tune on my guitar and not have to faff about filling in the blanks. I don't know if it's meant to make you read the music and play by ear, but that's the effect it's had on me. I read it from cover to cover, but have resorted to downloading tabs from the internet for my new tunes.