Guitar

I use this book in my Rock History/Guitar middle school classes. It is perfect for historical tidbits that I put in a powerpoint along with video clips of the different guitarist. I highly recommend this book!

An impressive book. It explains in easily understandable terms the range of what a guitar can do. Both theory musicians and players-by-ear can gain from this book. The artist selection mentioned in other reviews has some rather startling omissions. Leo Fender, while not a player in the traditional sense, merited a one-sentence blurb. Les Paul, the man without whom rock would have been very different, is mentioned as endorsing a Gibson product. Adolph Rickenbacker doesn't even get that much. Everyone will have a favorite guitarist that didn't make the cut, but the omission of these three men is incomprehensible. One bit toward the end of the book made my head spin. On Page 211, while discussing restringing, Mr. Chapman recommends using wirecutters. Your guitar salesman will love you, and you'll put your repairman's children through graduate school if this advice is followed. All in all, buy it for the playing tips and take the rest with a grain of salt.

This book looked interesting when I picked it up at the store. I bought it and I'm glad I did. It is very thorough with what the title of the book states. It is especially delightful to recognize as you read the book that it was written by a person who is not only very knowledgeable on the history, but also the guitar music theory itself. The way he descibes solos for example in a particular song is done very well and with insight. Very colorful descriptions of guitar playing and different styles in many songs. That's pretty hard to do. Buy it, you will like it too.

"Guitar" comes on like a nice, well-designed coffee-table book, albeit on a rich topic: guitars and guitarists. Immediately, it becomes much more than that. Eric Clapton contributed the forward, and author Richard Chapman, an accomplished musician, offers a brief introduction. He has a heartbreaker of a story, told in around fifty words. As an English teenager living in a village in Kent in the '60's he loved the guitar, saved his money, and bought one. His parents disapproved. "When I was 14, all my music and instruments were destroyed and burned by my father (...)" You know you are reading a work of passion and love - and great optimism, for he continues, "but this only gave me a greater determination to succeed." Chapman surveys the guitar's music, history, and many of its most significant players. There is a gorgeous painting of Segovia, and engravings and pages from medieval manuscripts that show guitars or guitar-like instruments. You read his paragraphs in awe of his ability to tell a lot, briefly. He analyzes the music - pleasingly. You get a little music theory, and I welcomed it. In addition Chapman seems to have a deep store of music-history tidbits. On the roots of slide guitar, we learn that W.C. Handy in around 1903 "passed through a southern railroad station and saw a singer playing slide guitar with a knife, producing what he termed 'the weirdest music I ever saw.' " The book is divided into Classical, Flamenco, Blues, Country, Folk, Jazz, Rock and Pop of the UK and Europe, Rock and Pop of North America, Latin and World. Within those categories are many subcategories. Lots of great photos. The text is orderly and elegant. Influences and origins are given careful attention. There are color and black and white illustrations - historical documents, appropriate snippets of written music, paintings, and archival material. Famous electric and acoustic guitars - Gibsons, Resonators, Rickenbackers, Stratocasters, Martins, others - are in here. There's an enormous amount of material. The layout and art direction is continuously a pleasure, the captions are consistently informative, and the glossary and index are thorough. Chapman lets you know at the outset that the vastness of the subject necessitated an enormous amount of culling, and then paring down. He loves the guitar, and can teach it, too - and has put that enthusiasm to great use. It's a first-rate documentary that is scholarly, lively, and greatly satisfying.