Metal Rhythm Guitar Vol. 1 (Troy Stetina)

This is a great book if you wish to become competent at playing the electric guitar. I have tried and failed with several other books and the main reason for this I think, other than my lack of competence, is that these other books try to be all things to all men. These books treat electric, acoustic and classic guitar in the same way as if they are the same thing. Clearly they are not.Most beginner guitar books dutifully guide you through playing the main open chords. After a few weeks practice (probably less for most people), you can knock out a bad rendition of 'Wild Thing' using the three most common open chords. Not very helpful.Metal Rhythm Guitar Vol. 1 gets straight in by showing you how to tune your guitar and then how to set-up your amp for different styles. Then it goes into power chords. Most books I have come across either deny the existence of power chords or make it so mysterious they you will not learn to play them. Within a short time you will be learning 6th and 5th string power chords. All very well explained. It takes no time at all before you are playing tunes that sound quite authentic. Instead of getting bored, I was going over it all several times to improve my technique.I am sure that if you buy this book and conscientiously practice all the lessons you will become a competent electric guitar player. It is a beginners book, but most essential techniques are there. Slides, hammer ons, open chords are all there as well as an introduction to improvisation. Even lead guitar might not be that far away.I have seen some descriptions of this book as coming with a CD. In my case I had a download key. Not a big deal but do not be disappointed if you were after a CD.Highly recommended.

Ive been playing for over 15 years, and am totally self taught, i would consider my self an intermediate guitarist.I wanted to improve my Lead, so i bought the Lead Vol1, and started working through that. I was improving drastically, but i was finding i needed to mix up my practicing not wanting to get bored of doing the same thing all the time.So i decided to purchase the rhythm vol1. Now i have been playing rhythm for all this time (so worried i would do book in a night), the first few songs/chapters i flew through (just learning power chords, changing strings etc) but my theory was poor and the book sort of re-taught me well. It has great patterns to learn and im perfecting every one.Now my timing and technique has a much improved, so im glad im working though both vol1 of troys books.I would recommend practicing both books as the same time So it mixes up what your playing and they complement each other very well.Troys books are gold dust to me, i have a lot to thank to the guy :)

This book is truly for beginners. The songs are easy (and rock!), the techniques are explained very clearly, and there are various techniques on display that are easy to execute but sound effective and awesome. If you're someone who had been playing for some time, you might find this book too easy, and might want to go straight for Volume 2 (still, you might want to check it out for the awesome songs to play!).That said, even though this book is excellent, i'm subtracting one star for a few reasons. First of all, there are some typos and mistakes along the way. This isn't the first edition, so you'd think those typos would've been corrected long time ago. Use your ears, don't just blindly follow the tab. There are some things that aren't explained before they're introduced. The biggest example of this is pick scrapes - they're introduced in one of the songs with no prior introduction. The technique of pick scraping is not trivial to execute for a newbie, so you'd think Stetina would've at least included examples of different pick scrapes and how to do them properly.

I'd highly recommend this booked to anyone who is a complete beginner or anyone who wants to get a good foundation in playing rock and metal. A lot of the techniques thought apply to other styles of playing, it's just that the tutorials are in the style of hard rock. At the end of each of the 6 chapters there are example songs and also backing tracks. The online audio examples on the Hal Leonard website are great and can be downloaded but also played using their online player which has the added feature of changing the tempo of a track but not alter the speed (or you can just download a mobile app which will do this).The author recommends playing to a metronome or drum machine and also record your self playing. I cannot stress enough how beneficial this is to both keep time and also get feedback on how you sound and where you can improve.If you have already been playing for a while you may find yourself progressing through this quickly. I'm already at the end of chapter 5 and have got the second book which looks like it has loads of stuff in there.

Of all the books I have as a guitar teacher (about 200!) this is one I start rockers on once they have done a couple of weeks limbering up and getting there fingers to fret notes fairly cleanly. If you want to rock this should be your first book. You can get the basics and finger exercises off the net - after a week at that you're ready for this book. It leads on to book 2, or a book 1 Lead and then another Lead book 2, or you might want to take the song route rather than loads of exercises and go through the Total Guitar book by Troy. After a couple of months of Metal Rhythm you'll be ready for the John Ganapes book, 'Blues You Can Use' (most rock is based on the blues so it's not just what yer dad plays!) If you follow the Stetina series you'll end up like a junior version of Vai, Satriani, Johnson or Morse. If you want to be like Clapton or Moore, switch to the John Ganapes series one you've finished Metal Rhythm Book One.