A guitar book can cover everything from the absolute basics to advanced techniques. From there you can get complete songbooks with chord overviews, fully transcribed albums in tablature books, or books that teach you everything you need to know (and more) about how guitars are built, how to maintain them, and even the illustrious history of the guitar.
Learning to Play the Guitar
These days, we're spoilt by numerous routes to learning to play the guitar. If you want to start by teaching yourself or taking lessons, a guitar book can always be helpful. It doesn't matter what style of guitar you want to play or whether you're strumming a classical guitar, a steel-string acoustic guitar or an electric guitar, you'll be able to find the right book to match what you're playing and what you want to play. Dig deeper into our range to find more music books, songbooks complete with guitar chords, and even complete guitar lesson courses.
Learning Chords & Playing Songs
Any aspiring guitarist can make a solid start with the help of a beginner's guitar book. Inside you'll find clear instructions about how to tune up, hold your guitar, and how to play the most common chords. Once you progress, you can even pick up a guitar chord handbook, which is a bit like a complete chord dictionary. Even with just a couple of chords under your belt, you'll already be able to play a few hundred songs, and for beginners that's recommended, because the more you learn, the more you'll want to pick up your guitar and play.
Lessons for Beginner & Advanced Guitarists
You can get guitar books about an array of different subjects. So you could pick up a lesson book that goes over all the basics for beginners including practice pieces. if you really want to get stuck in, it can also be a good idea to get a book on music theory since, in the long run, this is only going to make it easier to understand how to improvise and even write your own songs or compositions. For more experienced guitarists, there are also books that cover advanced playing techniques or specific genres like blues, fusion or jazz.
Full Courses with a CD or Digital Audio
Older lesson books come with a CD loaded with tracks you can play along to, but these days, most lesson books will come with a code so you can download example tracks or even gain access to online tutorial clips, handy tips and options to play audio clips at a slower tempo so you can learn at your own speed. These example tracks and videos can be invaluable when you're learning to play, since they can give you an extra insight into how playing the guitar and certain techniques work.
Guitar Tablature & Score
So you can get a grip on sight reading, a lot of lesson books will teach you a basic understanding of musical score - the same notation as piano music. But you can also learn to read tablature, which simplifies the process a bit without you having to read a note. In tablature, six lines are drawn to represent the six strings of a guitar. Numbers are written on the 'strings' to indicate the fret position. With a tablature book, you can learn to play entire songs the way the guitarist played them on the original recording.
From Nursery Rhythms to Jazz and from Ed Sheeren to Jimi Hendrix
Since there are so many different kinds of a guitarists out there, each with their own wants and ways of doing things, we stock a massive library of guitar books, all focussed on a plethora of different genres and a plethora of different artists. So you can pick up a book that will teach you to play the jazz standards or the entire catalogue of everyone from Taylor Swift to Abba.
Frequently Asked Questions About Guitar Books
How long does it take to learn to play the guitar?
It can take anywhere from two weeks to two-to-three months of study before you can play your first songs on the guitar. How fast you learn depends on your determination and dedication. Just like anything, regular practice is key.
How old do you have to be to take guitar lessons?
Children can start taking guitar lessons from as young as 6 years old. It can help smaller children to kit them out with a smaller sized children's guitar at first, rather than a full-sized model. From there, you're never to old to start learning to play the guitar.
What's the best guitar book?
It's important to pick a lesson book that will match the way you learn, so a book that you know is going to motivate you to keep playing and practising every day. For example, you could start with one of the popular method books from De Haske or Hal Leonard.
