Having worked with this book daily for a couple of months, I can now see why this is one of the best-selling guitar instruction books. This book is an incredibly well-crafted program of study that is successful in driving you to build proficiency in seven key guitar techniques.
The book is 52 sets of facing pairs of pages, one pair of pages for each of 52 weeks. Each pair of pages contains 7 exercises, one for each day of the week. Each day of the week is devoted to a particular technique: Mondays are Alternate Picking, Tuesdays are String Skipping, and so on. Each exercise is a unique new exercise that you can usually pick up and make noticeable improvements on in about 10-20 minutes each day. This all adds up to 364 exercises that Troy Nelson has designed to fit into almost any day that you can spare 10 minutes for and get some real value out of.
This book is just so well-designed, and the work that Troy Nelson has put into assembling these exercises is to help you succeed with it:
- Because there's a new exercise each day, you get constant variety; there's always something new. If something isn't working for you one day, tomorrow's a new day and a new technique. It makes it very easy to come back to it the next day even if you felt defeated by an exercise or technique.
- At the same time, there's a continuity from week to week of each exercise. Usually a given week's exercise for a particular technique is related in obvious ways to the one seven days prior. As you progress through the book, you rarely turn a page and start at square one, so it's very easy to see yourself improving as the weeks go by.
- Finally, the exercises are all musical enough to enjoy playing, rather than just some finger motions on the fretboard. They're either a playful walk across a scale of note, or they're a fragmentary lick or riff that you could imagine playing in an actual song. Several of them I kept playing for several weeks, because I enjoyed them and really wanted to be able to perform them easily. Needless to say, this really helps you keep at it!
Initially I was skeptical that the book was really "Beginner to Advanced," and I'm pretty beginner. I've seen some reviews saying you can't be too beginner for it. That may be true, but I'm also pretty beginner, and I went ahead and tried anyways. I'm glad I did, it was incredibly helpful and worthwhile. Most of the exercises are not as hard as they might look at first, and you can always take things as slowly as you need to before building up speed with repetition. If an exercise is too hard, I usually put in the time (10-15 minutes) getting it as good as I can get it, and then move on to other practice for the day. Over the weeks, I've noticed that I am still making improvements on the most difficult techniques, even if I'm not succeeding at them initially. So at this point, I'd encourage just about anyone to jump in and keep plugging at it for a few weeks, even if you can't do them very well at first... those technique muscles will build up.
Finally, at a higher level, one of the things I'm come away from this book with is some great insights about how to design successful training and learning programs. Learning guitar is difficult, and it requires you to put in the work. No one else can do the work for you. The effort put into this material to give it abundance, variety, continuity, and intrinsic value is an incredibly powerful helping handed extended your way to help you put in the work and get the most out of your effort.
Guitar Aerobics: A 52-Week, One-lick-per-day Workout Program for Developing, Improving and Maintaining Guitar Technique Bk/on
4.5 | 3,111 ratings
Price: 22.22
Last update: 11-19-2024
About this item
From the Publisher
Guitar Aerobics
-For All Levels from Beginner to Advanced
Expand Your Skill Set
Techniques taught include alternate picking, arpeggios, sweep picking, string skipping, legato, string bending, and rhythm guitar.
Audio Tracks Demonstrate How Licks Should Sound
The accompanying online audio includes all 365 workout licks plus play-along grooves in every style at eight different metronome settings.
Musical Styles Include:
- Rock
- Blues
- Jazz
- Metal
- Country
- Funk
A daily dose of vitamins to keep your chops fine-tuned!
Top reviews from the United States
David S
Easily the best investment I've made in improving my guitar playing
Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2020JC3
Really Good Guitar Book
Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2024Russ Jackson
vey good, but audio content could have been better organized
Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2010