Book Review: Hal Leonard’s Guitar Method – Complete Book & CD Edition 1, 2 & 3 by Will Schmid
Advantages:
- The backing tracks on this one are complete collections and the sound is perfect. The practice tracks are fun to play along with, but make sure you stay focused so you don’t lose your own styles.
- The lessons contained in it are all relevant to current music and this also makes them much more interesting.
- A minor point for many of you, but important in the case of guitar books, is that this one contains no typos.
cons
- Perhaps one of the biggest negative aspects of the book is the fact that in book 1, the methods seem to be losing their organization and paying less attention to some important concepts.
- The tabs have been a bit exaggerated. Once they are presented, the book appears to contain too many tabs and this often becomes a problem for people who want to learn how to read musical notes.
- There are advanced concepts that are touched on in the book and as a guitarist you will realize that it is important to have a teacher for such advanced techniques.
Mel Bay Guitar Method Grade 1:
advantages
- The organization of this book is fantastic as each lesson builds on the previous one.
- The book is also very useful for learning to read musical notes or reading music.
- Each technique is described in detail and deepened in them to learn them correctly.
cons
- The selection of songs on the discs that come with the book are not suitable for playing and make the CDs quite boring very often.
- Also, burning backing tracks to CDs is inexpensive, making it less useful for beginners.
- As mentioned above, the lack of typos should be important and this book has several typos which again make it difficult for beginners.
Hal Leonard’s is the best overall product, but Mel Bay’s is better for learning to read music.
