Product Description

Guitar Exercises For Dummies includes over 300 exercises along with lots of technique-building practice opportunities. It starts off with warm-up exercises (on and off-instrument) and then logically transitions to scales, scale sequences, arpeggios, arpeggio sequences, and chords, with a focus on building strength and consistency as well as refining technique.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21782 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780470387665
• Condition: USED - VERY GOOD
• Notes:
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From the Back Cover

Train your fingers to become a lean, mean guitar-playing machine!

Want to sharpen your guitar-playing skills? This practice-oriented playbook is packed with hands-on technique builders, from warm-up exercises and scales to arpeggios, chords, and much more. You'll see how to apply your technique with performance pieces at the end of each chapter.

• Review basic guitar fundamentals — posture, holding the guitar, sitting and standing with the guitar

• Brush up on guitar notation — decoding tablature, comprehending chord diagrams, interpreting neck diagrams, recognizing rhythm slashes

• Warm up away from the guitar — release tension, improve breathing, prepare your mind and body to play

• Wake up those fingers — limber up your fingers by playing simple exercises

• Develop strength, speed, and independence — play single-note patterns and chord progressions

Open the book and find:

• More than 300 exercises in various keys, positions, and rhythms

• Drills & tips to perfect your playing and maximize your practice time

• Technique building opportunities

• Scales, scale sequences, arpeggios, arpeggio sequences, and chords

• Full-length pieces to play along with

• Ways to improve your musicianship

Bonus CD Includes

• Selected exercises from each chapter

• Every performance piece

• Open string tuning notes

• Metronome tracks of different tempos

About the Author

Mark Phillips is a guitarist, arranger, author, and editor with more than 30 years in music publishing. Jon Chappell is a multi-style guitarist, arranger, author, and journalist, and former editor of Guitar magazine. Phillips and Chappell are bestselling authors of Guitar For Dummies, 2nd Edition.

Customer Reviews

Complete, Thorough, Well Thought-Out Addition to an Excellent Series
Guitar Exercises for Dummies is a great aid for developing technique. Its well-organized collection of scales, chords and arpeggios (in all different keys and patterns) provides a solid foundation for any player. Included are five patterns for the major scale, five patterns each for the three minor scales (natural, harmonic and melodic), and five patterns for arpeggios (major, minor and seventh chords). Thankfully, the book is well organized, so it's easy to find any scale in any pattern.

Once you learn how the authors name the five patterns (two start on the 6th string, two on the 5th string, and one on the 4th string), you can use the table of contents to quickly find any scale or arpeggio based on that pattern. Looking for a Bb minor 7th arpeggio starting on the 4th string? No problem. That's pattern #5 in 8th position (page 145).

Also included are chord exercises, which is unusual in a typical "exercise book." As a bonus, each chapter include. You also get a CD--nice playing! It's not really necessary for the scales, but it's nice for the songs. You won't find modes, or chords beyond the 7th here, but for a comprehensive collection of major and minor studies in all positions and keys, this 200+ page book is hard to beat.

Exercises for Your Fingers and Your Brain
Drill, baby, drill! That's what this book is about, with its scales, scale sequences (patterns), arpeggios, and chords numbering in the hundreds. The exercises here are organized by patterns, and each pattern is presented as a neck diagram (complete with fingering) and in music & tab at the beginning of each section. I particularly liked the arpeggio and chord sections, as that's what most scale books don't deal with. Authors Mark Phillips and Jon Chappell include some interesting songs (Mozart, Irish songs, Christmas carols, etc.) that apply the material taught in the chapters. The book includes some speed drills in the back, and the CD is helpful, especially for hearing the songs at the end of each chapter, and for "keeping you honest" when trying to keep up with those seventh chord arpeggios. Nice work, Mark & Jon!

Stuck in 1st position? This is the key to open your fretboard.
The Phillips-Chappell guitar series in "Dummies" is very good. The authors write directly to the issues that are of interest to beginning guitarists in a clear and well illustrated manner.

This book is much more than exercises. It is the key to the next level of playing. The mystery of the fretboard is solved if you follow this book and put in some practice.