First 15 Lessons - Electric Guitar: A Beginner's Guide, Featuring Step-By-Step Lessons with Audio, Video, and Popular Songs!

Bought this book for my daughter who is starting electric guitar. These days everything is on a screen which is great but there are times when sitting down without the glare and distraction of the screen/internet makes for a better experience. Which is why I bought her the book, after a very short time she realised that you need to access the on line lessons to help make sense of the instructions and lack of instructions. Its very helpful to have on line advice/lessons and the book provides a code to unlock the videos - great but I had hoped the book would have enough to help her through the first stages of learning the basics without the internet - it doesn't so for us the book has not been what we had hoped. The on line lessons she unlocked are brilliant, very helpful and I'm sure she will progress because of them but she wanted (and so did I) a book to use 10 minutes here and there, open it up whenever you feel without having to always go on line.

This is a steep learning experience. It does say 'Fast paced' on the back cover but if you have little to no basic guitar knowledge this is a massive understatement that could easily deter learners. This goes immediately from 'how to hold a guitar' to reading and playing power chords with rests, ties and dots. If you can do that from the get-go I suggest that this book is not for you. Then we get muting, hammer on, pull off and then the intro to Layla. This quickly exeeds beginner level and you will need a teacher to guide you through the techniques which come thick and fast. If Beginner is above Novice (aka Debut) then this could work but the jump from holding a guitar (Lesson 1) to 2 and 3 note power chords and muting (A5 two finger barre, muting A string on G5 power chord) in Lesson 2 is unrealistic for a beginner. Also, there are no lesson numbers for the audio next to the track. You need to ignore the lesson number on the download and match the title of the tab in the book to the MP3. Minor but shabby and annoying. The track 'when I come around' requires you to tune down a half step to match recording - why do that in a beginner book and how would you do that without some basic knowledge or instruction? The book also says 'real tracks to play along to' however these small tabs are not part of the downloads so to play along you will need to access through Alexa (for example) or pay and download the full track and use an app to slow that section down to your speed. I will use it to teach when students are at the appropriate level.

As I wanted a book for beginners this is not the book for me it starts by teaching anything but how to play guitar if you know nothing. Sorry but complete rubbish

It looks like you need to have some ability to read music but it'll do me for the short term as it does show you where to put your fingers

very good tutor manual