West Music has decided to bring you a new and exciting option for learning to play the guitar.  Skeptical Guitarist is a great new method series by Bruce Emery from which you can learn to play: even if you know very little about music. This series utilizes tablature instead of the traditional notes on a staff, so anyone can learn to play quickly and easily. Not only is this series fantastic for beginners, but it’s great for seasoned players learning to play in specific styles, like blues or jazz. Even the guitar-heads here at West Music are excited about this one! We are currently stocking 3 titles out of the 11-book series at our stores in Coralville, Moline, Marion, and Ottumwa; you can read a little bit about each of these books below. Happy strumming!

1. Guitar From Scratch - The Streamlined Edition - This book is intended for guitar teachers and their students, in both group and private settings.  The information, condensed from other titles in the series, is presented here in a more direct manner with less detailed explanation.  The text has been stripped down to the essential information, so the teacher has room to put his or her own personal stamp on the material.  This book uses chord diagrams and tablature to get the student playing easy material ASAP: chords first, some strumming and finger picking, then on to melodies, bass lines and scales, and even introducing 12-Bar Blues and some basic blues improvisation.
2. Guitar From Scratch - Guitar from Scratch is aimed at the rank beginner (you know who you are!). It’s all about chords: their individual personalities, the mechanics of playing them, and how they relate to other chords belonging to the same key. After getting the left hand (fretting hand) under control, we turn to the right hand to explore the easiest and most common strumming and finger picking patterns.  Even if you’ve been playing for a while, you might want to check out this one. 
3. Blues Guitar From Scratch - This book starts off with how to play blues accompaniment, known as comping, by working the Blues Shuffle and Guitar Boogie patterns into the Twelve Bar Blues chord progression in the Keys of A and E.  Then it’s on to the use of the Minor Pentatonic Scale in blues lead playing, first in Open Position and then around the neck using five different Box Patterns, or pockets of notes, that follow the C-A-G-E-D System of chord and scale layout. The less commonly used Major Pentatonic scale is discussed and put into practice up the neck. Finally, we look at slide guitar technique, first in Standard Tuning, then in Open Tunings.