The Best Guitar Method

At last, you have a fresh alternative to the big publishers’ stale method books. The Best Guitar Method combines an instructor-friendly curriculum with proven strategies for teaching the skills that today’s guitar students are clamoring to learn. The entire multi-media package includes 218 pages of structured lessons, 118 online videos, 355 online audio recordings, and several printable resources. Plus, you will love having free online access to a dynamic database of popular songs that are aligned with student skill development!

Award-winning guitarist and music educator Brian Rivers meticulously developed The Best Guitar Method by integrating the curricular needs of formally trained music educators, private music teachers, the expectations of contemporary music students, and his time-tested strategies for developing independent guitar players. He then enlisted a team of professionals to merge these concepts into a complete curriculum that is effective, fun, and engaging.

What makes The Best Guitar Method truly special is Brian’s extraordinary ability to connect his formal training in music education at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music with his decades of success as a popular classroom and private guitar instructor, and as a professional contemporary guitar player.

Brian explains, I have always been frustrated by the available beginning guitar method books because of the disconnect between their outdated approach to teaching guitar, and what really works in developing students into guitar players—and so I wrote The Best Guitar Method. I like to think of The Best Guitar Method as a ‘craft’ publication that bridges the worlds of formally trained music educators and contemporary music students to a far greater degree than the cookie-cutter method books marketed by commercial music publishers.
Frequently thought of as the “Bob Ross” of guitar education, Brian delivers the entire multi-media package with warmth and humor. Finally, you have a guitar method book that makes teaching easy and learning to play the guitar fun, The Best Guitar Method is guaranteed to excite and inspire music instructors and their guitar students alike!

Who is The Best Guitar Method written for?

Music educators
Private teachers
Students, from ages 9 to 99
Why is The Best Guitar Method the best?

Promotes lifelong musical expression by teaching techniques that translate outside the classroom
The curriculum is applicable to a wide
variety of musical styles
Each lesson provides detailed instruction
on how to play
Each lesson includes a Play and Do that emphasizes what to practice
Students learn accompaniments and melodies—all students play all the time
Lessons establish proper left-hand and right-hand playing techniques
Sight-reading starts on the third string,
G-A-B, (Do-Re-Mi)
Classroom internet access is not required - the book provides a stand-alone curriculum
Online demonstration videos compliment printed instruction
Online audio is available at a variety of tempos
Differentiated curriculum (simplified and
challenge) is available online for many lessons
The book uses standard notation, TAB, and innovative chord grids that show fingerings, note names and scale degrees
Students can access an online database of popular songs that they can play using the chords they have learned in the lessons
What will students learn?

Strum patterns
Fingerstyle, and flatpicking
Syncopated strum patterns using dotted and tied rhythms
The primary chords (I, IV, V, and V7) and secondary chords (ii, iii, and vi) in the major keys of G, D, A, C and E
The primary chords (i, iv, v, and V7) in the keys of E minor and A minor
The first position single note fingerings for all the keys listed above

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