The Acoustic Guitar Bible (Paperback)

One previous reviewer refers to it as a 'tutor'. Another reviewer said that after reading it they felt 'informed'. I feel that the second comment is the more accurate. There are a wide range of truly excellent 'tutors' out there for anyone who wants to learn how to master the acoustic guitar. (There are also some very poor ones - but that's another matter).

Whilst the 'bible', does contain elements of 'tutorship' by including exercises, riffs and performance pieces, it covers a lot more ground. If your search is for a full-blown guitar tutor, then this is probably not the book for you. (In that event, begin by looking at 'The acoustic guitar method' by David Hamburger, or 'Beginning Fingerstyle Blues' by Arnie Berle and Mark Galbo. More demanding, but no less good is 'Acoustic Blues Guitar' by Kenny Sultan. If you're also interested in electric blues, tutors don't come much better or more rewarding than 'Blues you can use' by John Ganapes. All come with CD's and all are available via Amazon UK).

But back to the 'bible' ...

There is so much in this huge 243 page, large format book that it would take a small novella to review it. Even the 'Contents' listing covers 4 full sides!

Maybe I can best explain what I mean by it being less of a tutor and more of a broad overview by listing a few of the other topics that are covered. In some cases I have paraphrased themes to cut down the list:

Development of the acoustic guitar
Intonation
Tuning (covered from a wide range of perspectives - not just a single method)
Tendonitis (and other guitar-related hand problems)
Right and left hand warm-up exercises
Practice (for hands, mind and ears)
Melody, harmony, bass line movement, rhythm
Tone, texture, dynamics
A detailed look at all manner of musical conventions (eg: scales, thirds, fifths, key signatures, intervals, triads, inversions ..... )
Exploring the fingerboard
The 3-chord trick
Seventh chords and harmonising with 7th chords
More complex chords (added and suspended)
Modes of the major scale (eg: Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian ....)
Pentatonic and blues scales
Tunings (including open tunings, drop tunings, modal tunings, Nashville tunings, radical tunings)
Harmonics
Tapping and slapping
Pickups for acoustic guitar (eg: piezo, magnetic)
Pre-amplifiers
Equalizers
Feedback problems
The art of stage performance
Use of separate microphones in a performance
Changing strings
String and guitar care (inc. '10 golden rules')
Taking your guitar out and about
Looking after your hands and nails
The capo
Effects and processors
Guitar synths
6 performance pieces (broad range of types)
The Ten Acoustic Guitar Commandments

See what I mean?

The CD's are not supportive of a tutorial approach in the sense that they don't take you through graduated exercises. Whilst some tracks are examples of riffs and rhythms, others are of full blown performances .... and very good they are too. For instance, by track 19 on CD1 you're listening to a rhythmic piece that wouldn't sound amiss on a Gordon Giltrap CD!)

As I said at the outset, if your search is for a tutor to take you slowly and gently through the basics of acoustic guitar playing and styles - look elsewhere. But if your need is for a book that covers just about everything you will ever need to know about developing your playing skills and both general and specific knowledge, then this book really is a treasure trove of information. As such, it certainly merits 5 stars.

At 45, having just bought my first guitar 7 weeks ago I am a complete newbie and not particularly knowledgable of other guitarists. So this review may be of interest to other newbies.

The performance pieces at the end of CD2 left me in no doubt that Eric Roche must be one of the most skilled guitarists in the world. His jaw dropping prowess on the CD examples had me intimidated and disheartened at first. Some of the chord shapes in some of the excercises seem almost unachievable at speed (then again I still struggle with the Fm barre chord) and the speed with which he finger-picks must be a blurr to watch - if only a DVD were included.

Having said that, the excercises sound so colourful and interesting that I have stuck with this book in preference to the other two that I bought at the same time (Guitar Method - Hal Leonard and Play Acoustic - Dave Hunter). None of your strum-along-to-a-song stuff here. In fact hardly anything that I recognise and not what I was originally looking for at all. But I found it very fresh, enticing, alluring.

The first time the subject of strumming is broached is on p38 track 16. In neuvo flamenco style a chord is strummed 33 times in just 4 seconds! To a newbie like me it sounds near impossible to mimic but Mr Roche gives an excellent explanation of how it's done. Maybe one's wrist doesn't need to fully rotate at 10 revs/s.

Just 7 weeks after buying a guitar and working with this book my guitar-playing friends are genuinely astonished at how well I can play. I am, of course, an exceptional individual with near super-human powers (barre chords are kryptonite) but it probably helps that the 'Bible's' first few excercises plunge you straight into finger-picking melodies that may be easier to play than they sound.

There is need for an addendum - there are some typos on some of the tabs and a couple of the excercises I've attempted have incomplete tabs i.e. the last few bars of the piece played on the CD are missing from the written tab.

To summarise then: Not what I was looking for as a newbie and not what I wanted. Complex, intimidating, unachievable...

Inspiring - I feel that if I can absorb just a fraction of Eric Roche's magic it will be like fairy-dust to my guitar playing.