Basic Guitar Lessons - Omnibus Edition: Play Guitar with Happy Traum

I found this book to be an excellent starter book for the acoustic guitar. It does a great job of teaching the student how to read music in a novell way.

I like Happy Traum's song selections better than anybody I've seen yet. It is filled with playable selections of folk, traditional, classical, rock, Appalacian, bluesy. I'd rather practice his choices than the rock and blues songs I promised myself that I would learn! (The CD only takes you through the first quarter of the book though).

Happy Traum's guitar instruction texts (I bought my first one in 1973, Flat-Pick Country Guitar) are pretty good, and this is no exception. It contains basic instruction for people who want to have fun with the guitar and presents fundamental plectrum and finger-picking technique along with the basics of musical notation. This is actually a compendium of four separate books. The music consists of an eclectic variety of popular tunes from classical (somewhat truncated) to bluegrass, blues and jazz. The accompanying CD is disappointing in that it does not cover every example in the book and it only covers the first of the four books. Recommended for the casual player. -TLG