50 Easy Classical Guitar Solos

This is not a method book. It is not for intermediate to advanced students. Rather, this is a book of surprisingly beautiful sounding yet simple arrangements for the beginning to very early intermediate classical guitarist. Everyone will have a different idea of what 'easy' is, so let's be clear about this. If you're a *beginning* classical guitarist with less than a year of lessons under the belt and the ability to play only in first position (and perhaps just dabbling with second or so), unable to do barre chords yet (or not at all well), you may want some VERY easy solo material to supplement your main lesson (or method) book (like while working through the first third or half of Noad 1). After all, scales and exercises can be boring and you may want to try solo pieces. The problem is that at this point most supplementary solo books are too difficult, even if they're not particularly advanced. Willard's 50 Easy Classical Guitar Solos fits this niche perfectly. The very attractive-sounding arrangements, all in standard tuning, clearly arranged in order of difficulty, and with virtually no barres until near the end of the book, are designed to be fingered with great ease, which is important for the new guitarist who is still struggling with basics like hitting the right strings and frets. The first couple pieces are almost too easy, but pleasant enough, and after you're up to speed you'll probably want to skip those, but there's still plenty in the book to entertain and challenge the beginner. Even the early intermediate student who wants some easy pieces to warm up on or memorize will probably find 2/3 or more of this book of value. There is a nice variety of pieces in terms of musical period, composer, key, tempo and so on, as well. The inclusion of tabs and a CD is a bonus, although the tracks are slightly out of order compared to the book. Overall, I would say that for the right level of student, this book is a true pleasure to play, and worth every penny.

I own several other "easy to intermediate" level repertoire books, and this one has some good pieces not found in any of my other books. I tend to disagree with the reviewers who suggest that there isn't enough variety among these songs--I was actually pretty impressed with the selections here. The CD is very good, because Willard plays slowly enough to make it more helpful than if he was racing along at concert speed. I sure wish I'd had a book/CD like this 20 or 30 years ago! I've played guitar off and on for over 30 years, but just purchased this 2 months ago. I took lessons for a few months way back in 1980 to learn the basics of classical guitar, and have mostly played classical since. However, I haven't played consistently because of re-occurring pain in fingers/joints, and also what I perceive as a lack of talent. So I'm still not much beyond the "advanced-beginner" stage. Which leads to my final reason for recommending this package, and why, for me, one little thing was probably worth the 12 bucks I paid: Willard has slightly modified Tarrega's lovely Study in E minor (one of the best pieces in this book), making it easier by eliminating a bar chord that has always been hard for me to play smoothly--and hurt my wrist... And the change doesn't detract from the beauty of the song. I'm now playing it better than ever, and it doesn't hurt!!!

I was actually looking for a decent book on Spanish ballads and I came across this book. This is a great book for beginner or intermediate classic CLASSIC guitar players. As many reviewers mentioned, the pieces get complicated as you go on BUT not necessarily faster in tempo, which is what I was looking for. If you're looking for fast pace pieces (yes, it's a technical term) such as classic Spanish ballads this is definitely not what you're looking for. Yes, there are some difficult pieces towards the end...but the reason they are complicated is that they weren't originally written for the Guitar. And one thing that struck me the most was that on the recording the pieces are played by an electric guitar with Harpsichord sort of effect, which really hurt...with all that, I gave the book five stars because pieces are very consistent and they go from easy to more complicated ones. All of them also have TABs which can be helpful for beginners...it just wasn't the book I was looking for...

I started teaching myself classical guitar a few months ago. I picked up this book along with another instruction book. Once I learned the notes from the other instruction book, I started playing the songs in this book. They start off simple and get progressively more difficult. The CD is also very helpful in getting an idea of how the songs should sound. As a beginner, I am very pleased with this book. It has really helped me become a better player and get a few songs under my belt. I would highly recommend it.

I just got a classical guitar for a gift and have had a difficult time finding music to become accuainted with the instrument. You need to know how to read simple tabulature so some knowledge of guitars is nessary. A excellent book to get started with guitars is "GUITARS FOR DUMMIES" which has a small section for classical guitar. Once you have to basics down, this book will give you a good direction to go. The pieces start off easy and gradually gat more involved and show you a good cross section of music for classical guitar