Rick Fortenberry “Sandpiper Guitar Studios”

July 27, 2006

Learning to play guitar is the easiest thing in the world to do. It can also be one of the hardest. One can learn to strum a few chords in relatively short order and make some nice sounds. But one can choose to dig a little deeper, to the point where one's guitar playing becomes an expressions of one's own inner music--the music of the heart--which is really what it's all about, isn't it?

Susan Palmer's new book/CD "The Guitar Lesson Companion" bridges a major gap in learning to play the guitar. It's the book I wish *I'd* written, having studied at Berklee College of Music and having taught guitar for 20 years.

This thick, rich and blessedly spiral-bound volume with its accompanying CD, is designed to be used while studying with a private guitar teacher. As the author states right up front, studying with a good teacher will save a lot of time and money and accomplish far more than the do-it-yourself approach, through which so many guitarists--unnecessarily--come to understand the instrument.

A student enters the book at whatever level she is in at the moment: "beginner", intermediate or advanced. This may mean studying chords and how they work with songs in jazz, rock or folk, or even learning to read notation, the language of music (the musical examples are also in tablature).

The well-known CAGED system of understanding the language of the fretboard is covered, along with a progressive, intelligent blend of reading and rhythm studies, all essential concepts a serious guitar player must master. The main scale types are thoroughly explored, against a musically satisfying backdrop of guitar, bass and drums on the CD.

This ground-breaking book/CD is the one I wish I'd written for my students, but it's also the one I wish I'd had when first seriously studying guitar. All the fundamentals and more are here. This is a good investment in a guitarist's education.

Rick Fortenberry

Sandpiper Guitar Studios
Cape Cod, Mass.

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