Solo Guitar Playing, Bk. 1

Rating:
Summary: The best of best
Review: Among all books written by Frederick Noad, this is the book you wanna keep with you, if you play a classical guitar. Don't worry about buying any other books, because this book has everything you need to know to be a "good" classical guitarist. Amagingly, this is not only textbook but one which's filled with unlimited capacity to use. I mean, even if you finish using this book, try every single pieces with different interpretation. Arrange all pieces with "your" interpretation, with changing tone, volume, harmony, etc..... it never ends using this book. It's just worth to buy.

Rating:
Summary: I love this book.
Review: Do get this book if you are going to try or are trying to learn how to play the guitar by yourself. The difficulty of exercises progresses slowly and with complete explanations before going on to more challenging material. Actual pieces of music are very pretty and fun to play, and footnoted at parts where the reader may encounter trouble. Of course, it does help a lot if you have prior experience in reading music. One of the things I like most about this book is that it does not have songs like "Old McDonald" and such. =) It starts solely with plain exercises, and then only when the reader is ready to play actual music does Noad integrate them into the lessons. The only problem I have with this book, which doesn't mean the book is in any way defective, is that it doesn't explain and teach chords very well, so playing music other than classical may be difficult if you learn guitar from this book only. But I think it's a great book anyway.

Rating:
Summary: Solid beginning to intermediate teach-yourself book
Review: Fabulous book. I'm a somewhat accomplished pianist, so I can't comment on how this would be for a beginning musician, but the guitar technique is explained very well, with many studies and complete pieces. My only complaint is that the book is so good, I want to move on faster than I'm ready for!

Rating:
Summary: excellent!
Review: I am just beginning to learn to play the classical guitar, and have purchased several books and this one is by far the best. It includes many exercises that you could practice on without getting bored. (Most other books contain one exercise per type of technique that they want to teach you, and it gets quite tedious.) This one has several similar exercises that you can move on even before mastering that one particular exercise, and return to find that you've already become proficient without working on the same song 50 times. It might be a good idea to also buy a book that is even more basic, possibly with tablature, just to get acquainted with the notes and positions. I strongly recommend this book!

Rating:
Summary: Perfect starting book
Review: I bought this book a while back. I'm not all the way through with it yet, but from what I've done it's great. I tried learning from another starting classical guitar book, but I had some trouble. This one, however, is easy and fun. It's easy to understand, starts from the very beginning of learning (tuning, reading music, ect) and progresses at a perfect pace. Also this book is very big and will take many months to finish. If your starting grab this one !

Rating:
Summary: An excellent work.
Review: I bought this book based on the recommendations of other amazon.com reviewers. This book presents the material as clearly and concisely as it could be presented. The exercises are very helpful and thoroughly explained. I simply haven't seen another book which explains the concepts covered as clearly. I would note that the book is definitely written at an adult reading level. While it covers the material thoroughly, it doesn't spoon-feed the user, which is exactly what I was looking for. I would like to thank all of the other reviwers who guided me to this book.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent work.
Review: I bought this book based on the recommendations of other amazon.com reviewers. This book presents the material as clearly and concisely as it could be presented. The exercises are very helpful and thoroughly explained. I simply haven't seen another book which explains the concepts covered as clearly. I would note that the book is definitely written at an adult reading level. While it covers the material thoroughly, it doesn't spoon-feed the user, which is exactly what I was looking for. I would like to thank all of the other reviwers who guided me to this book.

Rating:
Summary: this is a wonderful book
Review: I used the second edition when I was in college in 1979 and I only had the cover left. I am now taking guitar again and have been looking for this book for quite a while. It's the only one to have. I have not been able to find anything like it.

Rating:
Summary: If you are teaching yourself classical guitar, a must have
Review: My backround: I had two years of piano about five years ago, so I can read music, but I just started playing the guitar one month ago. This book is written at my level, and it isn't too easy or too intimidating. Had I not had 2 yrs of music reading exposure, this book would probably be a little difficult. The thing with this book is, it is for classical guitar players, not chord struming folk, rock or jazz players. Though other styles will probably benifit from the information, this book focuses on teaching you basics about how to play classical music. For example, there is no tabulature in the entire book. And there is one chord diagram just to show you what one looks like. In this book everything is written in notes and all chords and songs are presented this way. Picks are never used in classical music, so there is no info about the flatpicking or strumming you hear in modern music. On the plus side, this book is very professional and traditional in the way it goes about teaching you everything. That is, there is a lesson, followed by maybe 3 practice excercises. A lot of attention is placed on getting the techniques down right before moving on, because the last thing you want to do is learn something wrong and have to go back and try and forget it. Basically this is the best guitar book for classical music that I have come across. Rock fans may need to go elsewhere

Rating:
Summary: If you are teaching yourself classical guitar, a must have
Review: My backround: I had two years of piano about five years ago, so I can read music, but I just started playing the guitar one month ago. This book is written at my level, and it isn't too easy or too intimidating. Had I not had 2 yrs of music reading exposure, this book would probably be a little difficult. The thing with this book is, it is for classical guitar players, not chord struming folk, rock or jazz players. Though other styles will probably benifit from the information, this book focuses on teaching you basics about how to play classical music. For example, there is no tabulature in the entire book. And there is one chord diagram just to show you what one looks like. In this book everything is written in notes and all chords and songs are presented this way. Picks are never used in classical music, so there is no info about the flatpicking or strumming you hear in modern music. On the plus side, this book is very professional and traditional in the way it goes about teaching you everything. That is, there is a lesson, followed by maybe 3 practice excercises. A lot of attention is placed on getting the techniques down right before moving on, because the last thing you want to do is learn something wrong and have to go back and try and forget it. Basically this is the best guitar book for classical music that I have come across. Rock fans may need to go elsewhere