I've had this book for 25-odd years, ever since I first started trying to learn the guitar, which has been an on-and-off, mostly-off affair ever since. I recently decided to pick the guitar up again, before discovering that a regular practice schedule doesn't really fit well with the chemo cycle. I did make myself inordinately happy by learning to play a couple of Smashing Pumpkins riffs really badly, though. And I read this book.
It's a funny book, trying to be everything to everyone in a way that, to be honest, doesn't really succeed. It starts off with potted biographies of a bunch of "guitar innovators". This would be much more effective nowadays with an accompanying website full of key examples of their music. As it is, you get some words and have to go search for what you hope is a good example of their work on your own. This is followed by sections on acoustic and electric guitars - largely their history and construction, followed by how-to-play-guitar, a guide to maintaining and customising guitars, and "performance technology" - roughly everything downstream from the guitar itself. Very jack of all trades.
Despite the attempt to cover both acoustic and electric guitar, there's a distinct bias towards electric. For example, most of the customisation and performance technology stuff is primarily to do with electric guitars, and the "guitar innovators" almost all primarily play electric.
The biggest, key section is on playing the guitar. The guitar's a flexible instrument, playing many roles, so there are subsections on rhythm guitar, melodic guitar and harmonic guitar. Needless to say, I suck at all of these, and the material goes way beyond my ability. Still, there are some things I notice. That acoustic history comes out in focussing on classical-style chords. Power chords, despite being a core element of rock, are hidden at the back as an "advanced technique"!
In terms of music theory, it packs an awful lot in. Compared to a book on tonal music theory, it just throws everything at you in a few pages - modes, weird scales, fancy chords, etc. Modulation, a complicated and advanced topic in music theory texts, is over and done with in a couple of pages, one of which is largely taken up with a big, friendly transition diagram. I guess modern music tends to be much more flexible than tonal "classical" music, so all these ideas need to be present, but don't need to be handled rigorously.
All in all, a funny book, perhaps an artefact of the information-paucity of the mid-late '90s, when not everything was on the Internet. I'm a big fan of "get the book" for my hobbies, but overall I don't think I'd bother now. The information I care about is easily available, and the bits that aren't, I don't care about.
Posted 2024-03-08.