KISS Guide to Playing Guitar

Rating:
Summary: binding problem
Review: As the case with so many DK publications, the appearance is attractive and information useful but the binding is poor. The pages in my copy came loose in a short time making it a nuisance to use.

Rating:
Summary: Content seems good, but pages falling out!
Review: I just recently got a guitar as a gift. I knew nothing about guitars. I picked this book up because it covered a wide range of information, from the history of guitars to recordinging your own music, and it does it with very clear descriptions and color photos. (use the look inside feature and you'll see what I mean) The guitar instruction part of the book is also very good. It doesn't overwhelm you with music theory and how to read music like most other books. It just shows you some basic cords and gets you strumming. Overall, a great book for those new to playing guitar.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for those new to guitar playing
Review: I just recently got a guitar as a gift. I knew nothing about guitars. I picked this book up because it covered a wide range of information, from the history of guitars to recordinging your own music, and it does it with very clear descriptions and color photos. (use the look inside feature and you'll see what I mean) The guitar instruction part of the book is also very good. It doesn't overwhelm you with music theory and how to read music like most other books. It just shows you some basic cords and gets you strumming. Overall, a great book for those new to playing guitar.

Rating:
Summary: Good place to start
Review: I like the approach of this book. It starts off with an introduction to guitars, and then goes into basic lessons that you can also hear on the included CD. It includes enough theory that I can understand scales and chords, not just ape some fingerings.

The one downside of this book, is that even a novice like me has spotted a fair number of typos/errors in some of the theory in this book - enough to leave me scratching my head at times, trying to puzzle out the examples. Mostly, it's little stuff like a chord explanation mapped to a keyboard diagram where the minor note goes up, rather than down. It's too bad, because I think the book is otherwise excellent.

Rating:
Summary: Good place to start
Review: I like the approach of this book. It starts off with an introduction to guitars, and then goes into basic lessons that you can also hear on the included CD. It includes enough theory that I can understand scales and chords, not just ape some fingerings.

The one downside of this book, is that even a novice like me has spotted a fair number of typos/errors in some of the theory in this book - enough to leave me scratching my head at times, trying to puzzle out the examples. Mostly, it's little stuff like a chord explanation mapped to a keyboard diagram where the minor note goes up, rather than down. It's too bad, because I think the book is otherwise excellent.

Rating:
Summary: Superb Step by Step Guide
Review: I've already started to use this guide to teach my young kid. The main thing about it is that it's friendly. The author gets across some difficult ideas with a very clear style of writing. One to buy, I'd say.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for beginners
Review: If you do not read music and you are brand new to any instrument - this is the book to have. It gives the history of the guitar, maintenance and gets you started fast. I already read music and play the piano - and I became very bored, very fast with this method. I switched to the Hal Leonard method and liked it better. The book is wonderfully replete with photos and info. I am not sorry I bought it, as it is an interesting book - but I find I am learning much more with the Hal Leonard system. Still, this is a great book for a beginner.

Rating:
Summary: Content seems good, but pages falling out!
Review: It is a shame. The content seems good, but the pages started falling out after just one day. The binding is terrible and renders the book impossible to use. Very disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: The information was great for me as a beginner although I didn't understand the music theory section. (i believe it's just me on that though). however, the pages are slowly coming out one-by-one after only 2 months of usage.

Rating:
Summary: NOT VERY GOOD
Review: This book's content is very poor. The theory is hard to understand, not to mention POINTLESS in the way that the author TRIES to teach it. The order in which the techniques are explained don't even make sense to me now that i am no longer a beginner guitar player. Other than being very popular and having attractive pictures, The KISS Guide to 'Playing' Guitar teaches you NOTHING worthwhile. A beginner using this book will learn how to tune the guitar, play some simple chords, BUT other than that, they will still remain a beginner after they finish this book. The internet is actually is better resource for tuning the guitar and playing simple chords than this. For quality method books that ACTUALLY teach you how to play look into the authors: Troy Stetina, Jamey Andreas, Fred Sokolow, and John Ganapes, but absolutely STAY away from books like these.