The Guitar Lesson Companion

I was contacted recently by a guitarist called Jian who wanted to bring to my attention their guitar teacher and in particular this teacher’s guitar method book that she wrote. I was intrigued and was put in contact with Susan Palmer, a guitar instructor at Seattle University. Susan is very passionate about teaching guitar which led her to create ‘The Guitar Lesson Companion’. This method book was created to help students get more out of their lessons and provide a structured framework that provides teachers with an outline to expand upon and exercises that students can work through on their own.

First of all the book is ring bound which instantly makes it very usable, there is nothing more frustrating than trying to play from a book that keeps closing, this book will sit on your music stand, table, lap whatever and stay open at the page you want. This is usually overlooked by publishers or maybe it is more expensive to produce books this way? The book starts with the basics of playing guitar and reminded me of the Fred Noad classical guitar book that my teacher used when I was starting my classical guitar studies. To begin with there are some warm up exercises which a beginner will probably have trouble with but it is something that they can continually reference and use and it makes sense to be at the start of the book. Next up Susan dives into musical notation in relation to open strings. If you have ever wanted to learn how to read music, even if you can already play guitar, it is essential that take it slowly and learn to recognise each note on the stave in relation to the fretboard. Susan’s studies give you the opportunity to step through the reading exercises filling in the blanks so that you are reading the music, rather than just looking at it.

So Susan’s idea is you start out slowly, using a few notes on the top E string to progress through basic Rhythmic exercises. Each exercise is available on the included CD to help you to follow the rhythmic examples to start out. After a few pages of studies Susan moves on to the B string and so on slowly building in rhythmic complexity and expanding your fretboard knowledge and reading abilities until you are reading music that covers all 6 strings in the first position (first 3 frets and open strings). This is a great stepping stone for learning to read music across the entire fretboard and is the first thing you learn as a classical guitarist. The next section of the book moves on to scales and theory with plenty of exercises to help you learn. Susan has written studies to take you through the Major keys starting with G Major and then through the cycle of fifths each using all 6 strings to play the scale, a scale pattern and then arpeggiating the major scale to finish.

The next section of the book focuses on chords, using diagrams and TAB for chord changing exercises and jams. Each chord sequence either has a melody using the Major/Minor and Pentatonic scales that you have already learned or a set of scale diagrams that you can use to improvise over the changes. There are diagrams showing the Major and Pentatonic Minor scales in all 5 “box” positions and exercises to complete to make sure you know the actually notes as well as the scale degrees. There is also a section on the CAGED system of movable chord shapes to help you open up even more possibilities over the fretboard.

All in all it is a very thorough book, so who is this book for? Well it is definitely aimed at guitar teachers and students who are beginner to intermediate level or perhaps the more advanced player who simply wants to learn to read standard musical notation rather than just TAB. I can see how teachers would benefit from having this teaching framework to aid their own teaching syllabus and it gives students the opportunity to complete exercises on their own and work with the CD between lessons. Every aspect of learning guitar is covered in a systematic but simplified manner. What I’m saying is, don’t expect to learn entire songs or instrumental pieces however you will have the chord and scale vocabulary to learn your favourite songs if you follow Susan’s method, practice and don’t try to rush through it (easy to say I know!).

If you would like to order ‘The Guitar Lesson Companion’ head over to Lead Cat Press.