How electric guitars and amplifiers work.

Here's a sampling of the topics covered in Rock Guitar For Dummies:

If you've been playing for a while, you can pick up some tips to help improve your playing and move to the next level. If you're a beginner, you'll discover what you need to know to start playing immediately, without drowning in complicated music theory. Whatever rocks your world, Rock Guitar For Dummies can help you bring that message out through your fingers and onto that electric guitar that's slung over your shoulder. Whether 'moving your listeners' means mowing down crowd surfers with your power chords or making the audience cry with your sensitive melodies, no other musical instrument allows you so much versatility. But even if you were a butt-kicking international person of mystery, playing rock guitar would still be cooler because it involves art, passion, power, poetry, and the ability to move an audience of listener. Its even worth buying for just the recommended exercises.Face it, being a rock guitarist is just about the coolest thing you can be – next to a secret agent with a black belt in karate. Lastly, it has some sections on playing specific types of music and some exercises that is pretty good.īasically, unless you are a top level player that already has a degree in music and theory, then you could take away enough from this book to make it well worth buying and take your playing to the another level, no matter what level you are currently playing at. I know several talented guitar players, a couple that do gigs even, that never had any formal teaching and could take away SO much from book and take their understanding of playing the instrument and their abilities to another level. If you want to fully understand the instrument, fretboard, scales, chords, sheet music, theory, all that jargon that sounds like a foreign language, etc, then this is what you've been looking for. Then, the rest of the book goes more into depth, but in a simple easy to understand way, even the most complex subjects. The first part has the most simple basics for the absolute beginner.

The absolute best single source for learning everything needed to know about the guitarĪnd explained in a way, unlike other books, that doesn't require you to already have a degree in music and music theory to understand. Introduction 1 Book I: Guitar 101 5 Chapter 1: Guitar Anatomy and Tuning 7 Chapter 2: Get ting Ready to Play 21 Chapter 3: Buying and Stringing a Guitar 33 Chapter 4: Deciphering Music Notation and Tablature 59 Book II: Sounds and Techniques 75 Chapter 1: Basic Major and Minor Chords 77 Chapter 2: Adding Spice: Basic 7th Chords 95 Chapter 3: Power Chords and Barre Chords 109 Chapter 4: Right-Hand Rhy thm Guitar Techniques 123 Chapter 5: Playing Melodies in Position and in Double-Stops147 Book III: Getting to Know Guitar Theory 163 Chapter 1: Navigating the Fretboard and Building Triads 165 Chapter 2: Getting to Know the CAGED System 189 Chapter 3: Playing Snazzier Chords with Chord Tones andExtensions 211 Chapter 4: Playing Chord Progressions by Numbers 229 Chapter 5: Identifying Tonics, Keys, and Modes 241 Chapter 6: Dominant Function and Voice Leading 271 Book IV: Rock Guitar 283 Chapter 1: I Know, It?s Only Rock Guitar, but I Like It285 Chapter 2: Playing Lead 301 Chapter 3: Groovin? on Riffs 323 Chapter 4: Going Up the Neck and Playing the Fancy Stuff 333 Chapter 5: The Care and Feeding of Your Electric Guitar 355 Book V: Blues Guitar 377 Chapter 1: Introducing the Blues and Playing Blues Rhythm379 Chapter 2: Blues Progressions, Song Forms, and Moves 405 Chapter 3: Musical Rif fs: Bedrock of the Blues 427 Book VI: Classical Guitar 443 Chapter 1: Introducing the Classical Guitar 445 Chapter 2: Playing Easy Pieces in Open Position 467 Chapter 3: Combining Arpeggios and Melody 481 Book VII: Exercises: Practice, Practice, Practice 501 Chapter 1: Putting the Major Scales to Use in Your Playing503 Chapter 2: Adding Major Scale Sequences to Your Repertoire517 Chapter 3: Tackling the Three Minor Scales 531 Chapter 4: Building Finger Independence with Chord Exercises561 Appendix A: 96 Common Chords 587 Appendix B: Accessing the Video Clips and AudioTracks 591 Index 599

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