Reviews for Guitar Class Method, Vol. 1

The average rating for Guitar Class Method, Vol. 1 based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-30 00:00:00 Randy Calvert Went through this older edition and I liked how it was set up. It's for complete beginners and the first section starts off with teaching basic chords. Most of the songs used are well known folk songs so you just sing the songs and strum along. The next quite short section teaches a bit about Blues and introduces tab and more about rhythm. The songs here are easy to play in this style. Then is the section on Finger Picking. Now that the student knows quite a few chords and tab, this technique makes the accompaniment to the songs more interesting. The last section teaches note reading and is quite extensive. After the student can read melody, this method goes through a number of scales, giving songs in those keys that the student can play and accompany. Along the way there is information on technique and music theory. There's even a last section on music theory that goes into a lot more detail. Oh, and there are books to supplement each of the sections if the student needs them. What some might not like about this book is that the songs are mostly older folk and popular songs.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-02-18 00:00:00 Fredrik Balldin Given the ambition of Taruskin's series (of which this is the fourth of five volumes), this 800+ page volume is the most ambitious of them all and likely the most important. Covering the first half of the 20th century, there are numerous challenging concepts introduced about the intersection of music with the emerging field of psychology as well as the idea of the composer as a public intellectual, begun in the more modern sense in the previous volume (regrettably in dilettante fashion) by Richard Wagner. The rising of musical nationalism, the development of rivalries especially that between Stravinsky and Schoenberg, the role of "peasant music vs. modern music" in the lives of Bartók, Kodaly, and Janáček, and the reaction of composers to the rise of totalitarian regimes in Italy, Germany, and the USSR are all issues that Taruskin tackles with great erudition and wit. As I've said about all other volumes in this series, this is not a book for those with no special musical training (as some volumes other Oxford History series are), however if you're a serious student of music there quite simply is nothing like this huge achievement.