Guitar Books from Beginner to Intermediate

Essential Elements for Guitar

The first book is Essential Elements for Guitar by Will Schmid, author, and Bob Morris, author. This is a beginner book. It takes you through all six strings. It has mini-lesson sections about guitar styles, playing, and history. It does include playing intro chords. When learning the chords you can use them to play the songs provided. This will give you a feel for how to use the chords. Sing or hum the melody to the songs while doing a basic strum with the three and four-note chords. Later on, you can add full version chords.

The book covers beginner note reading, how to hold the guitar and pick, tuning, quarter notes, half notes, dotted half notes, whole notes, and eighth notes.

With a rating score of 4-5 stars and 98 pages, it will be a good start to learning some basics.

Hal Leonard Guitar Method Complete: Edition Books 1, 2, and 3 by Will Schmid and Greg Koch. This method book is an intro to note reading also. I mostly taught out of Essential Elements for Guitar, but when it was not available at the music store I taught at, this was one of the other book choices. I really like that it concentrates on single note reading at first. Introducing chords after a while. It is also a continuation to book two and three. Each book gets progressively challenging, including chords, scales, and rhythms.

It has a high rating among the posted reviews, rating 4-5 stars. The book has 143 pages for all three books combined.

Melodic Rhythms for Guitar by William Leavitt.

This book starts with learning rhythm groups consisting of eighth note varieties including syncopated, tied, quarter note, and rest examples.

Then it puts these rhythm groups into song examples. The songs include chords so if wanted, you could play this as a duet. Guitarist one plays the notes and guitarist two plays the chords, then reverse roles when playing repeats.

It consists of 70 pages and also has a rating scale of 5.5 stars. This is a great book for getting eighth note reading down with plenty of examples.

Reading Contemporary Guitar Rhythms by M.T. Szymczak.

To me, this is a continuation of William Leavitt’s Melodic Rhythms for Guitar. With emphasizing 16th note rhythms starting with exercises and then putting the rhythms in actual tune exercises.

This is a must-have book in the continuation of reading rhythms for guitar. My suggestions for going through this book are to read the author’s notes, observe the picking indications, and do not be afraid to go slow at first.

With a star approval rating score of 4.5 and 109 pages in my version, this book will give you plenty of examples to drill in 16th note studies.

In Conclusion

In your journey to playing guitar, these books will be a start to learning the basics. The two beginner books are Essential Elements for Guitar and Hal Leonard Guitar Method Complete Edition: Books 1, 2, and 3. After learning the basics provided, studying position playing as in Berklee Series Reading Studies for Guitar-Positions one through Seven will give the guitarist a chance to break out of open position playing. Finishing with the mostly eighth note study book Melodic Rhythms for Guitar and 16th note studies in Reading Contemporary Guitar Rhythms will give the guitarist a well-rounded curriculum of study material. Please check out my Top 10+ Reading Tips link.