Ernie Ball How to Play Guitar Phase 1 Book - Beginner Guitar Lessons & Tutorials for Learning Acoustic/Electric Guitar - Perfect for Self-Study, Music Classes & Home Practice

First guitar book? Shopping for a kid or an adult? Need a refresher? Not much for reading? Like great illustrations? Don’t have much time? Get this book. Every guitar student of mine has a copy.This is my absolute favorite guitar method book. I’ve been playing guitar for 20 years with a mix of self-taught and lessons, and now I teach others. One thing that is always frustrating with traditional methods is how long they focus on the stuff kids, teens, and impatient adults find “boring” (like theory, single note practice segments that don’t make up a “song”, or simple outdated songs that are completely lost on younger generations). People want to say they’re learning guitar and be able to practice playing identifiable songs that they’re interested in. However, musicians know that all the “boring” stuff is essential to playing well and reading music. Ernie Ball addresses this expertly by segmenting the book into solo notes and chords, and providing practice segments and progressions that are more relevant. It allows me to be able to assign “boring” stuff paired with learning simple chord songs so people get playing fast and stay interested while building skills and theory knowledge.Another issue with traditional methods is that they tend to either target beginner adults (and use language geared toward adults with higher reading comprehension and vocabulary, a strong focus on theory, and few pictures) or young kids (and use simple “kiddy” songs and concepts). Ernie Ball bridges that gap by providing easy to understand concepts that aren’t written in a way that is condescendingly juvenile or overwhelmingly boring. They also provide comics that are appropriate and relevant for all-ages. It is the only book I’ve had teens without prior music experience stay interested in.Outstanding. I got this book over 20 years ago along with the second volume. In less than a week, I was playing and putting songs together. I never had a teacher, self taught. This book started it all!!!!!!!!!!! One thing about being self taught, I learned the music (godpel) I wanted to learn to play and not music that I would never need.Note: Anyone learn a musical instrument, there has to be a drive or desire yo learn. No one can teach ya that. But for music, its helped me through many low times in life. When strumming those strings and the hum that resinates in your body and your music seems to flow. There's nothing like it. And this book in comic form not just boring pics or alot of words. Gets it all started!!!!!!!!Pretty great for beginnersThere's the right amount of space between the lines to make it easy to write out tab. Since I teach guitar to more than one student, i like to make copies of what I do without having to rewrite a whole page of tab. The problem I find a little irritating is that the word "TAB" is printed large and very bold on every sheet in the book. We can assume they are all tab sheets without the redundancy. If I didn't take the extra step of covering that word up, my printer would be running out of black ink in no time. Also, I never write out tab out on both side of the tab sheet. Printing on just one side could mean either a significant cost reduction or, more pages would be nice.As an old student and left on my own by a deceased brother/teacher many years back, I found stuff in this book that would be very helpful to a beginning picker as well as an advanced picker that would be critical of their bad habits. It is easy to understand the lessons to be learned and already I have passed the things to my beautiful 18 yr. old granddaughter.This is the book I got as a kid to learn to play guitar and so it's what I got for my stepson. It is easy to read and understand and does an amazing job of teaching everything from the most basic and into notes and chords. I cannot reccomend this and the more advanced companion book enough.Update: After a shipping miscalculation (totally my fault) book arrived perfectly on time. Extremely pleased as I thought this book was out of print. Thanks, Brook Mays!I enjoyed the book, was laid out nicely, and as a piano player, I enjoy reading score rather than tab. I don't think it should be called an intermediate book though. Took me a couple of weeks to run through the whole thing and play it comfortably and I've only been learning for 6 weeks. I believe that makes me as beginner as they come. But I enjoyed it all the same. It's a nice book for beginners carrying on from the first book in the series. Would like to see else is out there as the more advance version of this to advance my playing and sight reading.I bought this for my son and I'm now using it to teach myself guitar instead. It's REALLY helpful, clear explanations and perfect for a beginnerIt's great they sell tab paper, it definitely saves the time having the draw the lines out yourself as I used to do. Perfect for anyone writing their own stuff. Only slight problem is they could maybe fit few more tab lines on a page, but other than that, great.Easy to follow and really well laid outThere was a lack of books such as this,so i purchased this one at a slight premium.Its exactly what i needed, however could have a few more pages than it does.