The Four Most Popular Guitar Method Books for Beginners
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- Опубликовано: 11 июл 2024
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One of the hardest parts of teaching guitar lessons or teaching yourself how to play guitar is choosing the right method book. There are many method books out there, and often you won't realize the method book isn't right until you are half way through it - that's a lot of wasted time!
I decided to use my experience with guitar teaching to make a video to help teachers choose method books. In this video I take a look at four of the most popular guitar method books - each of which I have a lot of experience teaching out of. The books are:
Jerry Snyder's Guitar School - www.amazon.com/Jerry-Snyders-...
Mel Bay's Modern Guitar Method - www.amazon.com/Modern-Guitar-...
Alfred's Basic Guitar Method - www.amazon.com/Alfreds-Basic-...
Hal Leonard Guitar Method - www.amazon.com/Hal-Leonard-Gu...
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Alan Rigoletto is a professional guitarist and guitar teacher based out of Lambertville, New Jersey.
Please be sure to read his guitar lesson blog at www.rigolettomusic.com 
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Well, it sounds like I picked the correct book to teach myself. The Hal Leonard was the second book I bought and I love it. I'm 2 1/2 weeks in and have fully callused fingers and playing Star Spangled Banner. Just notes, not chords yet.
Lovely video content! Excuse me for butting in, I would appreciate your thoughts. Have you ever tried - Riddleagan Skillful Playing Remedy (google it)? It is a great one of a kind guide for learning complex guitar chords and become a pro minus the headache. Ive heard some decent things about it and my work buddy at last got amazing results with it.
Awesome! I hope your guitar journey has been going really well since you left this comment!
I discovered your video after doing a search to compare the Hal Leonard method to Alfred's method. I am returning to my playing so I have the advantage of experience in my studies. I also bought both complete methods a while back. (I notice in your video that Alfred's now has a spiral bound edition). When first learning, by myself, years ago, I studied the "Learning Unlimited Series" by Hal Leonard, and had tremendous success, therefore I love their approach, and pacing. This time around, I intended to study both Hal Leonard and Alfred together. However, I found the Alfred course moving a little too slowly regarding full chords. Having already been used to playing full, five, and six string chords, I noticed that Alfred takes an extremely long time before it teaches them. It spends a great deal of time teaching three string variations of the C and G chords before expanding to the fuller versions, which aren't introduced until late in the method. Not wanting to rush through, or miss, any basic concepts, I took Alfred's method step by step. As a result, I was torn between whether to follow the lessons as shown, or just play the full chords that I've known for years. Glancing ahead, I also noticed that bar chords aren't introduced at all, which I was somewhat disappointed about. Whereas, I love the bass chord accompaniment, which I learned from Hal Leonard, years ago, I feel that the Alfred method moves just a bit too slowly for me. I absolutely love the Hal Leonard Complete method, and have also purchased their melody, and rhythm supplement material, so I'll be staying with them. I was glad to see that you also chose Hal Leonard as your favorite method. I'm still wondering if I should just take some concepts from Alfred's book/ CD set, since I did invest the money in purchasing it, rather than abandoning it altogether. I do like revisiting the bass-chord/ Carter style accompaniment, though Hal Leonard also teaches it. As a guitar teacher, I'd appreciate your professional opinion on this. Thank you! Great video. Check it Out! Ciao!!!
Hi@@renaissanceman165! Thanks so much for your detailed comment. I'm sorry that I must have missed this notification one you left this comment, but I'm happy to answer now if it still helps. I definitely recommend having the Hal Leonard method as your main approach while using the Alfred's method to supplement with additional songs/reading material. Any money spent on a method book is not entirely lost because it contains music for you to read.
As far as the pacing of the chords in the Alfred's book - this is directed at the true beginner, and in a lot of cases, a younger beginner with smaller fingers. I recommend supplementing with learning chord progressions and strumming patterns. Hal Leonard also has a series of books that contain songs with a limited number of chords - 2 chord songbook, 3 chord songbook, etc. This series contains more than enough material to supplement the any chord material you feel is lacking in a method book.
I appreciate your careful attention to detail in explaining the differences between each! Thanks again for being thorough for beginners like myself 😀👍
My pleasure!
Thanks, this was extremely helpful figuring out a book to teach my kids with.
I went through both the mel bay modern guitar method and alfred basic guitar method in the 1970s- 90s. it was difficult, but it did teach the fundamentals of music pertaining to guitar. the songs were lame, but it was really about a lesson in key signatures, sight reading and harmonized scales and of course dexterity of the plectrum or pick. i am older now but i now enjoy picking up a lead sheet and grasping the construction of the melody and harmony. so studying these two books over the years was not useless, it was just a long road to travel.
I did Mel Bay books also. I can just picture all the kids like me in the 80s and 90s who wanted to be Slash and were instead playing camp town races at recitals. lol.
Thanks for the video. That was helpful!
Glad it was helpful!
I’m going through the Hal Leonard method book with my teacher. Can’t wait to finally get callouses! I’m actually excited to play guitar now.
I hope you've been continuing to have success with the guitar!
Thank u Very much, I really like hall Leonard book, its easy for teaching guitar
I love this video.. Thank you so much.. I will go with the book you like the most ..
No problem. Best of luck!
Excellent analysis of these books/series! Good advice for newer teachers.
Thanks so much Craig!
Thanks for sharing your knowledge
My pleasure!!
I've used alfreds kid's guitar course for "guitar class" with 4th graders. I can't recommend it enough for young learners
Hal Leonard Play Guitar Today! Level 1 Copyright 1999 includes CD. This was my first book and the songs were easy and fun to learn. I was able to easily play everything in the book. It helps to review the book now and then after you finish to retain everything you learn.
You are correct about the Mel Bay Grade 1 book. I dreaded a lot of the exercises and thought I wasn't grasping it. Eventually, I went back to Hal Leonard to hold my interest and found I was moving along quicker. The end results are similar, but I enjoyed the journey with Hal Leonard.
Thanks Jerry! I'll check that book out. Not familiar.
Super helpful. I’m gonna start to get to guitar lessons soon. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
Glad you found it helpful! I provide online guitar lessons if you are still looking.
how’s the guitar lessons treating u?
appreciate the review --thanks
My pleasure!
Thank you so much for taking the time to make this video. As a newer music teacher, I found this super informative and I feel impressed and inspired by how clearly, calmly, and confidently you communicate. Have you tried any of the Suzuki Guitar Method Books?
I’m so glad you enjoyed my videos! I have not tried Suzuki, will definitely check them out. I recently uploaded new videos so be sure to check them out!
One year in - hows your progress?
I have a few of Troy Stetina’s books - Metal rhythm vol. 1 and 2, and a thrash guitar book. There’s no standard notation to bog someone down, but he does use standard rhythm notation symbols, so they’re mostly technique books with a touch of theory. pretty good if someone is mostly interested in playing heavy metal and hard rock. I do want to supplement that with a good fingerpicking book.
Nice! I'll have to check those out. Jerry Snyder's Guitar School, which I mention in this video, has a lot of info about fingerpicking. I recommend it in this case. I also recommend Aaron Shearer's "Learning the Classical Guitar" Part 2 (Part 1 is strictly for teachers). It's mainly for classical guitar but it is very thorough and will certainly boost your finger style technique!
Couldn't agree more about the Mel Bay Guitar Method. I've never used it for my own students because it was the book I had when I was very little and it was super difficult. It completely turned me off sight reading notation for quite some time.
Thanks a lot man.
You're welcome!
Yes, the Mel Bay book iD difficult but it's also much more thorough and satisfying than the Hal Leonard method, covering every playing position on the fingerboard and the tunes are beautiful.
"is"
However, Mel Bay isn't sequenced very well. It gets very difficult very fast with very little explanation. I used to use it, but it's too out of date. Alfred's is also out of date.
Maybe try the "Expanded" editions... They definitely take things at a more gradual pace.
I agree with Michael, although the expanded editions certainly help.
You should create weekly guitar lessons using these correct guitar rudiments books to teach the correct and authentic and efficient way of playing guitar for absolute beginners.
That's a great idea! If you have any other requests for lessons you'd like me to do, let me know.
*The Guitarist's Way* is a pretty good one, particularly up to the eight edition (1992).
Subsequent ones all good but some tweaks may not have been necessarily beneficial.
On a side note - thanks for the heads up on the Hal Leonard guitar book, the same one for *Ukulele* is one of the better books I've seen.
thanks a lot
My pleasure!
I use "Everbody's Guitar Method Book 1". It's very similar to Hal Leonard but I prefer it's rhythmic interpretation of certain shared songs better. Plus I think it's easier to look at. It's also convenient to point students to the RUclips page sampling each lesson, though some of the samples are over accompanied to the point it may not be eady for young students to differentiate the melody line they are playing. But then Hal Leonard samples have the same issue.
Love your video! So sad you stop making it
I started again!
Thank you! May ask which has the best audio examples?
Another issue which escaped my attention is :)
I'd like to learn to compose and play a few selected genre:
post-bop, flamenco, bluegrass, classics.
The rules are the same everywhere, major chord is major chord
but all the styles mentioned are very different from each other
so how to learn all of this things,what makes them different
sufficiently enough to allow compose and improvise within the chosen genre?
From which books?
Hi there and thanks for this. Some advice if possible. I am already learning piano formally so to speak, am trying to give the Trinity exams. Unfortunately I already play guitar and I don’t want to lose touch. In that context what’s a good guitar book to use. Something that’s probably more like a workout book. Any suggestions would be welcome. Thanks.
Hello, Alan. First, thank you for such an articulate video discussing your opinions on these books. A quote I really enjoyed from a book I read this summer was "No muss, no fuss." This video embodies that, and I appreciate it. My question for you is perhaps not easily answered. I have been playing guitar for about, let's say 5 years on and off. I am by no means a great player, but I can definitely play some songs and have decent skills. In middle school and high school, I loved music theory classes. However, I feel that my interest and ambition to learn music theory and to become comfortable with chord progressions and scales and keys, etc. was lost in my transition to learning the guitar, self-taught through RUclips. I speculate that a good guitar book might take me back to the beginning enough to teach me in a more in-depth way to fulfill my eagerness to link my broad-stroke theory understanding to the guitar. The first book you recommended almost sounds like that may be the right choice, could you comment your opinion based on my situation? Perhaps other people are in the same spot. Thanks!
Hi! Sounds like you have a good enough foundation with learning guitar and theory that finding the right book and really sticking with it will really help to solidify everything.
Jerry Sneider's Guitar School is great for this, so I recommend getting a copy and checking it out. Otherwise, I would recommend a different book that I don't mention in this video - Berklee Modern Method for Guitar. This is a book designed to help talented players learn all the basics of note reading, chord construction, key centers, reading lead sheets, and so on. The material can be a little dry TBH but I believe everything you are talking about is covered in this book.
@@rigolettomusic Much thanks! I will let you know how it goes in a few months.
You should try the "Expanded" editions of Mel Bay's method. They are paced much more slowly with twice the study material.
I will have to check those out.
Hello. Could you please tell me if you have had any problem with the paperback format? People usually recommend the spiral one.
I've never had a problem with the paperback!
Video starts at 2:35
Just wonderful, I've been looking for "ear training for guitarists" for a while now, and I think this has helped. Ever heard of - Peynharlotte Acoustic Smasher - (search on google ) ? Ive heard some super things about it and my mate got cool results with it.
I\'m not sure but ,if anyone else wants to discover best online guitar course try Elumpa Simple Guitar Alchemist ( search on google ) ? Ive heard some amazing things about it and my friend got amazing results with it.
Have you tried the "Fast Track Guitar Method Book" by Hal Leonard?
I found a lot of success just working through a guitar theory book. I learned all the scales, chords, triads, 7th chords, arpeggios, and intervals without all the fluff of a method book. And it only took me a few months.
I think the method book format is becoming outdated. Give students a syllabus, help them build a practice plan, buy a drill book or search for exercises on youtube. Repeat for a year or 2 and you're an intermediate guitar player.
Hi :) what do You know about harmonic Major and his modes?:)
I mean,how to make modal progressions for each of this modes
how it looks functional harmony for ionian b6
where we can find songs in this scale and modes of harmonic Major
or books/dvds in which someone teach about harmonic Major
because I don't understand why there is nothing all around :(
What is wrong with harmonic Major?
This is some kind of taboo or blasphemy? ;)
Could You make video about harmonic Major mysteries?
PS. and orchestration also called instrumentation,from which books
you can learn it best, where to start?
it's not about writing scores for a symphony orchestra :)
just for myself and my rock band :D and a midi program
that replaces the small orchestra ;)
I'm interested on the book how do I pay and how do I get it?
Have both HalLeonard, and Alfred methods. Really like Hal Leonard, and don't want to waste precious time going through the Alfred course simultaneously. I read music very well, with advanced theory since I am a singer, songwriter, composer, with experience on piano and other instruments. Just wondering how much I should take from Alfred beginning method, if at all, at this point. Check it Out! Ciao!!!
Can't hurt to use the Alfred books for extra reading practice!
I am giving a shout out to the much overlooked "Everybody's Guitar Method". They are inexpensive, and I find them excellent (I have also checked out the Alfred, Hal Leonard, and Mel Bay books...all are sufficient, but Everybody's GM has so far been my favorite, and I have taught several beginners using it). I can't explain why, but the pace, the song selection, and especially the accompaniments just strike me as tasteful. It is my go to...within one or two lessons, brand new students are reading simple melodies that sound great with the accompaniment, and have a grasp of how reading music works. Anyhow, just wanted to let ppl know, for me it's been the one I go to first
Yeah I teach these as well as their Young Begginer Series. Really good for young kids and agree on the accompaniment it’s very nice.
@@desmondmyers I think the fact that they are using somewhat interesting chords (for the teacher) on top of very simple (even 3-note) "melodies" keeps students motivated, and keeps me from going crazy. glad to hear someone else feels the same way, I felt like I stumbled upon a little-known gem. happy teaching...
I am not familiar with this one and will check it out right away!
I use that one as well.
Does anyone know a great book for chords only?
Mel Bay Modern Guitar Method (Expanded editions) is the One.
I will have to check out the expanded edition. Thanks!
Is hal leonard good for me as i am beginner and with no teacher?
As some other people have mentioned here, Hal Leonard is a very simple approach but could have more detailed descriptions. I would recommend it most for use with a teacher, although you may find it easier if you have any experience in music outside the guitar. Of the books I mention here, I recommend Jerry Snyder's Guitar School with Hal Leonard as a supplement.
What about the Berklee/Leavitt books?
I have taught many students using those books. They are very thorough but I would not recommend them for beginners. From what I understand, the approach of these books is to help skilled guitarists who do not know how to read music.
Which book would you recommend for me im 15 and im new to guitar
I use Hal Leonard and I have the same age as you, the book works pretty well
I agree with Keziah. Hal Leonard. The book always goes best when you have a teacher to help you out.
In my country rigoletto is a sleng for puking haha
hahahaha never heard that one before.
I was wondering if you can recommend the best one for a 12yo? My daughter plays the cello so she picks up quick, however, I don’t know much about guitar.
The book I recommend here, Hal Leonard Guitar Method, is perfect for a 12 yo.
Learn and Master Guitar 20 DVD version w/book.
Is this Hal Leonard book suitable if you want to start with an electric guitar?
Yes of course
Yes!
I don't find it useful. No CD too. Nice diagrams -no explanation
I found Lauren Bateman very good on RUclips.These books are pure jargon without a physical teacher
How should you pace yourself with this book? A chapter a week? A few pages a week?
It's important you get the most out of each song/exercise. It really depends on your skill level and how quickly you feel you pick up on each example. A page or two a week is good, or a few pages a week if you find it easy. Be sure to also spend time reviewing what you've already worked on so it can feel like second nature to play.
what is the best beginner guitar book today?
Hal Leonard is the most versatile for beginners.
Cheers for the video content! Forgive me for the intrusion, I would appreciate your thoughts. Have you tried - Riddleagan Skillful Playing Remedy (search on google)? It is an awesome exclusive guide for learning complex guitar chords and become a pro without the headache. Ive heard some great things about it and my old buddy Taylor got astronomical success with it.
Not an intrusion at all! I am always thrilled to learn about a new method book so I will check it out.
Learn how to read music with the guitar, and you don't need a method… All you need is the music
Which music theory guitar book do you recommend?
There is no tab in those old books 🙄
Hal Leonard book was useless for me.nice diagrams with no explanation of how to read
I get that. Guitar Method books are helpful but the best way to learn is to have a teacher to walk you through the steps.
Not really sure why guitar players are afraid to learn how to read music…