Richness of Content: Well, first of all, this is a book about the more interesting aspects of playing guitar, by the guy Who is perhaps the most technically versatile guitarist in the world. He's the head of guitar at a major 3rd level music Institute. Quite frankly, everyone is going to learn at least 3 things they didn't even know about before they read this book. Guthrie covers just about everything that you can do to a guitar - seriously. He doesn't over-labour a simple point by giving you a whole chapter of near-identical exercises. Almost every single paragraph approaches something new in a clear manner. Every example is available on the CD, almost all are available slow, then fast, and are played spot on. In most "advanced technique" books, truly interesting ideas are often neglected in the Rush to play simple things really fast. This is not the case here! There's chicken picking, emulating other instruments (koto, organ, violin, voice, etc), 8 finger tapping, interesting sweeping ideas, all kinds of crazy things involving harmonics, all kinds of interesting tap and bend licks... and believe it or not, he covers playing more interesting chords too! It's not just scales up and down really fast, unlike some books out there (not naming names). Finally, he even gets time to cover some music theory. How'd you fit all of that into one book? Big fat 10 for richness of content. // 10
Style: This is a man Who has been teaching guitar for more than a decade, both in person and through Guitar World and Guitar Techniques magazine. He writes in a manner that is at once extremely precise, and informal - always slightly humourous. Fun to read and easy to follow. 10 again. // 10
Impression: I teach guitar professionally and I'd recommend this book instantly to any intermediate or advanced guitarist looking to expand their playing. It gives inspiration and instruction for almost every aspect of modern electric playing, and there's very little that can't be applied to acoustic guitar. // 10
