A Beginner's Guide to the Classical Guitar
Carlos Barbosa-Lima, internationally renowned Brazilian guitarist, has written:
“Jeffrey Goodman’s excellent book, “A Beginner’s Guide to the Classical Guitar,” is very well conceived, covering all the multiple aspects of guitar technique. Exercises are built in a progressive way, having a wide variety of musical styles through various centuries.... I highly recommended this method and approach not only to all beginning classical guitar students, but also to pedagogues of the classical guitar as an excellent teaching tool and resource.”
A Beginner’s Guitar to the Classical Guitar is a complete “stand-alone” resource for the first year or two of classical guitar study. Internationally acclaimed, its teaching materials and innovative methods are used in more than 180 countries. It includes basic presentations of:
- holding the guitar - sitting posture, left and right hand positioning
- fundamentals of music
- music notation
- guitar notation
- tuning
- the art of practicing
- left and right hand technique
- music theory, including how scales and chords are constructed
- sight reading
There is also an extensive repertoire section that contains solos and duets organized by both key and level of difficulty. Multimedia resources include:
- Free You Tube Videos of music from the book. There are now more than 40 video performances of the repertoire from the book. Each video features 3 views of the playing – an overall “concert view”, a left hand close up, and a right hand close up. Many of the videos have a scrolling score at the bottom of the screen, showing each line of music as it is being played.
- A CD of 77 tracks from the repertoire of the book that is separately available for purchase as downloadable MP3 files (on iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.), or the physical CD itself.