Guitar Exercises for Dummies - Paperback

by Mark Phillips (Author), Jon Chappell (Author)

A guitar-playing practice guide with hundreds of warm-up and technique-building exercises

If you already play some guitar but need some practice, you're in the right place. Guitar Exercises For Dummies is a friendly guide that provides just enough need-to-know information about practicing scales, chords, and arpeggios in the context of specific skills and techniques to help you maximize its 400+ exercises and improve your guitar playing. (If you need instruction on topics like buying or tuning a guitar and playing basic chords, check out Guitar For Dummies.)

This practical book starts off with warm-up exercises (on and off-instrument) and then logically transitions to scales, scale sequences, arpeggios, arpeggio sequences, and chords, with a focus on building strength and consistency as well as refining technique. Each section helps you to practice correct hand and body posture and experience variations, such as fingering options and hand positions, and then ends with a brief musical piece for you to try. You can also practice incorporating other facets of musical performance in your exercises, such as:

• Tempo
• Time signature
• Phrasing
• Dynamics

The book wraps up with tips to help you maximize your practice time (like setting goals for each session), ways to improve your musicianship (such as studying other performers' body language), and an appendix that explains the accompanying website (where you can find audio tracks and additional information). Grab your guitar, grab a copy of Guitar Exercises For Dummies, and start perfecting your finger picking today.

P.S. If you think this book seems familiar, you're probably right. The Dummies team updated the cover and design to give the book a fresh feel, but the content is the same as the previous release of Guitar Exercises For Dummies (9780470387665). The book you see here shouldn't be considered a new or updated product. But if you're in the mood to learn something new, check out some of our other books. We're always writing about new topics!

Back Jacket

• Build strength and consistency as you play
• Practice with warm-ups, scales, arpeggios, and chords
• Play full-length pieces and songs

Sharpen your guitar-playing skills

This practice-oriented playbook is packed with hands-on technique builders, from warm-up exercises with scales to arpeggios, chords, and more. Brush up on guitar notation, wake up your fingers, and develop strength, speed, and dexterity. With more than 300 exercises in various keys, drills to perfect your playing, tips to maximize your practice time, and performance pieces to test your expanding skills, you'll be strumming the strings like a pro in no time.

Inside...

• A review of the fundamentals
• How to release tension and improve breathing
• Technique building exercises
• Scales, scale sequences, arpeggios, arpeggio sequences, and chords
• Ways to improve your musicianship

Author Biography

Mark Phillips is a guitarist, arranger, author, and editor with more than 30 years in music publishing.

Jon Chappell is a multi-style guitarist, arranger, author, and journalist, and former editor of Guitar magazine.