Justinguitar.com Beginner's Songbook - 2nd Edition (Spiral Bound)

The reason I've opted for 4 stars instead of 5 gel with several concerns made by other reviewers in various reviews.To bring these together --The book is VERY hard to use unless you want to risk cracking the spine. It really should have been ring bound. Its frustrating to be studying a song and to have to weight the pages down to stop the book shutting itself. It's smaller-than-usual width also makes it impractical to use on a music stand.A CD should have been included. The book assumes you know the songs (which are drawn from a very wide and eclectic range of genres and styles).To get most benefit from ths book you need to be familiar with Justin's website and tutorials. However, as you're reading this online, there's no reason why you can't search out his fabulous website and then dive right in --- but a CD would have let you work offline as well. Maybe Justin will consider making one and marketing it or releasing it via his website?The book is mostly for people who are singers who accompany themselves, or for those who want to accompany someone else who is singing. It you're looking for tab or notation or melody lines - forget it. What you get are lyrics, chords and tips about strumming styles plus other topics such as hints for fingerpickers.Chord diagrams are few and far between - so make sure you know your chords or have a good chord dictionary to hand. Having said that, most songs use pretty straightforward chords.------------------------OK - those are the reasons why I knocked off one star.In all other respects, the book is excellent and can be seen as a combined songbook and teaching/learning/tutorial resource. EVERY song is associated with appropriate, useful and clear notes about playing styles and techniques. Songs are carefully sequenced to reflect their levels of ease or difficulty. All songs are shown on the left page with all notes on the right page - so no need to keep turning over. (You can concentrate on trying to keep the darn book open at the pages you want as you simultaneously play your guitar!)The song index on pages 1-3 is very useful and comes with a way for you to keep a tally of your progress through the songs/lessons.Justin Sandercoe is renowned for the quality and generosity of his online tutorials and this book is a worthy accompaniment to that resource as long as you know what to expect.Hopefully this review has pointed out its minor weaknesses alongside it's undoubted strengths.

Nice and big, clearly written, major realisation, take your time and practice, practice and more importantly enjoy !, Justin has provided a great course for all ages.

This book is great! Justin is a brilliant teacher and has loads of tutorials online to accompany this book. Highly recommended for beginners. Would give more srars if I could!!

I've tried on and off to learn the guitar for about 12 years now. I've never been keen on lessons, they don't fit round my lifestyle well at all. I have tried guitar tuition books before, and they tend to come in one of two forms:-1 - Theory, notes and chords. Quite dry, not too inspiring.2 - A series of songs with 'easy play' tabs and chord symbols. This works even less well than the first. You might learn to play one song well, but its not then related to the next, so there's no progression or anything. Also, you'll probably find that technically you aren't even that good at the song you've just learned.Anyway, the two methods mentioned above made me give up more than a few times.The Justinguitar.com Beginners Guitar Course and Beginners Songbook are linked. I'd suggest you buy both if you are going to buy either, because they are pointless without the other. Individually them they kind of encompass the two kinds of book I mentioned above (but in the best way I've ever seen), but together they form a well paced and structured set of lessons with theory and songs built to help you progress at a fast but steady pace, which coupled with Justins excellent website telling you how to do things and helpfully showing you what is right and wrong.... well its the furthest I've ever come to getting somewhere with a guitar! I'm amazed and excited and so enthusiastic to complete the course (I'm only on chapter 4, but in two months I already play better than I have ever managed in 12 years.This is the beginning of a full course, and accompanied by a brilliant website. It's the best way I can imagine you'd ever learn to play the guitar... just do it, buy them both.

I have been 'playing' guitar for years on and off and I play the same things over and over again with mixed results.The book is the perfect size at A5 and it is spiral bound so very easy to view, unlike my other guitar tab books that constantly need a good bend to keep in place.There are plenty of great songs to learn and any strumming pattern or song I am not sure about is on his YouTube channel, so a great purchase.The songs can be played with simple chords or variations with finger picking or more complex strumming so wonderful for beginners and more intermediate players.One of the guitar books that will take pride of place unlike the others stacked up gathering dust.My favourites are Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton, Fast Car by Tracey Chapman, Vincent by Don McLean, The Drugs Don't Work by The Verve and loads of the others.Well chuffed. Thank you.

Brilliant beginners songbook. Well structured to fit in with Justins beginner course. I only like a couple of the songs in each stage, sometimes just 1,(9 stages with 10 songs each plus 10 extra songs at the end) but even that makes it really worthwhile buying because the way the songs are presented with the chord diagrams in the book and strumming patterns etc make it easy for you to have something to practice at each level. And practicing actual songs is what all your learning is all about and what really brings you on and makes all the effort you put in worthwhile. This book will definitely help me learn much better than other songbooks just because of the structure etc which i havent seen in other songbooks.