Book Review: Hal Leonard’s Guitar Method – Complete Edition of Will Schmid Books and CDs 1, 2 and 3
Pros:
- The backing tracks in this one are complete collections and the sound is perfect. It’s fun to play along with the tracks for practice, but be sure to focus so you don’t lose your own styles.
- The lessons contained in it are all relevant to today’s music and this makes them much more interesting as well.
- A minor point for many of you, but an important one in the case of guitar books, is that it does not contain typographical errors.
Cons
- Perhaps one of the biggest negatives of the book is the fact that, in Book 1, the methods seem to be losing their organization and paying less attention to some important concepts.
- The lashes have been exaggerated a bit. Once presented, it appears that the book contains too many tabs and this often becomes a problem for people who want to learn to read musical notes.
- There are advanced concepts that are tweaked in the book and, as a guitarist, you will find that it is important to have a teacher for such advanced techniques.
Mel Bay Guitar Method Grade 1:
Pros
- The organization of this book is great, as each lesson builds on the previous one.
- The book is also very useful to learn to read musical notes or read music.
- Each technique is detailed and deepened in order to learn them correctly.
Cons
- The selection of songs on the discs that come with the book is not adequate to play and makes CDs quite boring very often.
- Also, recording backing tracks onto CDs is inexpensive to record, making it less useful for beginners.
- As mentioned above, the lack of typos should be important and this book has a number of typos that once again make it difficult for beginners.
Hal Leonard’s is the best overall product, but Mel Bay’s is best for learning to read music.