# What are the most comprehensive books or book sets from which to learn guitar?



## jfd986 (Nov 22, 2010)

Hey guys,

I'll be starting medical rotations in Atanta soon, will be there for a year. In this year, I'm trying to replace the TV watching and random youtubing and time killing with blues guitar. I used to take lessons, and I'm familiar with the basic pentatonic, major/minor scales, then again I probably shouldn't say that because "familiar" could mean a whole different thing to people on this site 

ANYWAY 

Could anyone tell me what the best set of books (and possibly accompanying audio discs or mp3s) is for learning guitar? Things on which I would like full knowledge:

-Scales, all, and all the necessary theory behind them
-Chords. Barre, etc. how to see the scales and be able to generate your own (my last formal guitar lesson was on something called arpeggios, and I vaguely remember what they are, but anyway just something for chord generation rather than looking up chords on a chart all the time)
-Useful drills (I'm assuming there'll be a thread about that already, if not already about this)
-Jazz and Blues guitar content in general (I'm a fan of SRV's playing style and would like to know all the theory necessary to be able to practice to get there. I can practice, but my main problem nowdays is that , other than practicing hammers, pull-offs, major/pentatonic and just soloing and fooling around/12-bar, I don't really have anything else to learn, or rather anyWHERE else from where to learn it)

I thought of asking the guy in the music store, and I mean, he pointed a few things out, but wasn't very convincing/didn't seem like he had a comprehensive knowledge of what a good book has in it or what I want to get out of it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

NB: I have already tried learning off WholeNote - The On-Line Guitar Community - with guitar lessons OLGA guitar tab music chords scales and other goodies... and I find it somewhat of a chore since I'm not very digitally inclined and I can't figure out how to organize wholenote's lessons in a progression as in "week1" "week2" it just has them up there by who posted it when, not really citing one lesson as being tougher than the other and not giving an order in which to learn them. The only division is Beginner/Intermediate/Advanced, not enough for me.

Thanks in advance,

Jeremy.


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## kat_ (Jan 11, 2007)

If you really want to be thorough I'd include some general theory rudiments books that aren't aimed at guitar. I use a lot of the Mark Sarnecki rudiments books and I've heard good things about the Glory St Germain ones too. Those will get you understanding scales and chords really well, but they won't apply them to guitar. 

Then to apply all that to guitar I'd go for the Berklee books by William Levitt. It'll take all the theory rudiments and more and get them onto the guitar, mostly with a jazz context.

For blues stuff I'd go for the Alfred Complete Blues Guitar methods. There are 3 books with CDs. 

There are so many books out there that it's really hard to choose just a few, but those should keep you busy for a couple of years.


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## Hamstrung (Sep 21, 2007)

You may find this online source useful as well.

Free Guitar Lessons - Lesson Index


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## jeremy_green (Nov 10, 2010)

kat_ said:


> I'd go for the Berklee books by William Levitt. It'll take all the theory rudiments and more and get them onto the guitar, mostly with a jazz context.


I'd second the Leavitt Series. The first one comes with a lesson DVD too to get you off and rolling like you had a teacher going through the book with you.
It's good enough for Berkeley it's good enough for me : )


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