Top 50 Guitar & Music Books

Update: view the final list here: Top 50 Jazz Guitar Books

In the same style as we did the Top 100 jazz guitar albums and Top 100 Jazz albums, I thought it would be intersting to do a Top 50 of guitar and music books.

Let's make 3 categories:

1. Jazz Guitar Books
2. Guitar Books in General
3. Music Books

In case of music books, I'm not talking about biographies and such, but about music theory books, musical concepts, ...

Here's my list. I'm obviously a little biased since I am selling them (for a good cause though, namely the website), but I'm a fan of Sher Music books:

Jazz Guitar Books:

• Jazz Guitar Voicings Vol 1 - The Drop 2 Book (Randy Vincent)
• The Advancing Guitarist (Mick Goodrick)
• The Pat Metheny Songbook
• All Intros and Endings for Jazz Guitar (Jim Ferguson)

Guitar Books:

• The Brazilian Guitar Book (Nelson Faria)
• Chord Progressions for Guitar (Tom Kolb)
• The Guitar Player Book - The Ultimate Resource for Guitarists

Music Books:

• The Jazz Theory Book (Mark Levine)
• The Serious Jazz Practice Book (Barry Finnerty)
• The New Real Book 1
• Melody in Songwriting (Jack Perricone)
• Effortless Mastery - Liberating The Master Musician Within (Kenny Werner)
• How to Improvise (Hal Crook)
• Charlie Parker Omnibook

What are your favorite books?

Hi Dirk,

Great initiative! Maybe we should add the category books on jazz guitar(ists).
I'm reading The Guitar In Jazz by James Sallis at yhe moment. Great read!

Cheers, Joris

This one is rather neat for the "Music Books:" catagory.
200 OF THE BEST SONGS FROM JAZZ OF THE'50S

Harmony With Lego-Bricks by Conrad Cork (UK Book). An excellent book on learning the harmonic language of improvised music. Levine's book is good, but this is another way of thinking about the subject, a different way of thinking about song structures, standards etc. Written in an accessible and conversational style.

Contemporary Chord Khancepts is the only one I would add to the list here. It helped me with theory as it applies to the guitar, specifically with the knowledge and use of guide tones, and how they move on the guitar in any musical form. In my opinion, Steve's approach is well worth knowing. His website, also is prolific in it's offerings of transcriptions and information.
I have the Jazz Theory Book and will be checking the others on the list out. Thanks to everyone involved with this site.

Jazz Improvisation for Guitar: A Melodic Approach
by Garrison Fewell.

I really like this instruction book, and keep coming back to it for inspiration.

Effortless Mastery - Liberating The Master Musician Within (Kenny Werner)

Jazz Guitar Books:
- Talk Jazz Guitar - Roni Ben-Hur
- All 3 Truefire courses by Mimi Fox
- Chord-Melody Guitar - Bruce Buckingham

Guitar Books:
- The Advancing Guitarist

Music Books:
The Music Lesson - Victor Wooten (a must have!!)
Neue Jazz-Harmonielehre - Frank Sikora (German theory book with 2 CDs covering all I can think of and easy to understand)

Biographies:
Quincy Jone's Autobiography - one man, who is a personalization of the American music history of the 20th century and tell's unbelievable stories, what a joy to read!

More general books:

Frogs into Princes: Neuro Linguistic Programming
This is Your Brain on Music - Daniel J. Levitin
Effortless Mastery - Kenny Werner
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
The Inner Game of Music - Barry Green
The Music Lesson - Victor Wooten

Jazz Guitar Books :

Ben Monder Compositions - Ben Monder
Chord Chemistry/Modern Chord Progressions - Ted Greene
Harmonic Mechanisms 1-3 - George Van Eps
Creative Force - Pat Martino

Guitar Books:

Pumping Nylon - Scott Tenant
Wayne Krantz - An Improviser's OS

Music Books:

• Mark Levine's Jazz Theory is still exciting after many reads. My notebook is filling rapidly. A great read for any musician.
• Carl Woideck's Charlie Parker (Univ of Michigan Press) gives an in depth analysis of a lot of his work.

• Frank Mantooth's Chord Changes for the World's Greatest Standards and Most Requested Standards (Hal Leonard), both with assistance from David Baker, are great in helping understand reasonable approaches to chord substitutions.

Guitar Books & Jazz guitar books:

Right now I am finding I get more from the instructional videos than most books. I am working through a couple of Martin Taylor's videos (The Music of Duke Ellington and Jazz Guitarist) and Larry Coryell's Jazz Guitar now.

I will say that the little THE ULTIMATE SCALE BOOK has been a useful tool for a quick reminder of some scale fingerings when practicing.

All the books specific to jazz I would list have already been named. So I will add another general title.

Talent Is Overrated by Geoffry Colvin

I would like to post some Django-oriented title's that deserve a larger audience:
- Stephane Wrembel: Getting into gypsy jazz guitar
- Michael Horowitz: Gypsy picking
and the real eye-opener:
- Michael Horowitz: Gypsy Rhythm vol. 1. A tutorial etc.
It's in the right hand! ;-)

Great list, Dirk.
While not specifically Jazz, another Sher Music publication that I think should be on any musicians shelf, is;
The Salsa Guidebook: Rebeca Mauleon.

Hi Everyone,

Mick Goodrick's Book (Advancing Guitarist) is unquestionably THE one for me. Bruce Forman wrote a book using the same type of format.

I love all the others mentioned; I also like Jazz Guitar Soloing (Joe Elliot) and Guitar Fretboard Workbook (Barrett Tagliarino).

Jimbo

the best book ive found, be it for beginners or advanced players, is "Chords and Progressions for Jazz and Popular Guitar" by Arnie Berle - he goes from basic rock barre chords to advanced 3-note chord solos and rhythmic comping...quite an insightful book...my buddy who's played for nigh on 30 years is still picking stuff up from out of there!

Jazz Guitar...
The Advancing Guitarist

Guitar in general...
The Advancing Guitarist
Pumping Nylon (applicable for everyone)

Jazz...
David Baker (How to Play Bebop, Improvisation, etc.)
The Jazz Theory Book
Jamey Aeborsold Playalong Series <-- Godsend for a small-town jazz-less boy like myself.

I don't know if there are ladies among us, but I want to greet them anyhow.

My favorite books, and I only have a few are:

General:

HARMONY Walter Piston Norton Company 1941 (no ISBN found)
Counterpoint in Composition Felix Salzer and Carl Schachter Morningside book ISBN 0-231-070393
The Jazz Piano Book Mark Levine Sher Music ISBN 0-9614701-5-1 (i'm borrowing this one from a friend)
Clés pour l'Harmonie Jo Angler-Weller ISBN M-2309-5202-6

Jazz Guitar:
Improvisation et Harmonie Paul Farges Publication Alain Pierson
Techniques d'Improvisation Eric Boell HL Music


That's it
Looking Forward to the results
:)

I always wanted to play melody and harmony together and move away from only the self taught ,play by ear approach.
I find Jazz ballads by Jeff Arnold most useful. It has notation and tablature and most of the songs are familiar. I have made real progress in a matter of days

I am a fan of Pharaoh Sanders. When I lived briefly in L.A., I was fortunate to spend some time with Howard Roberts. He told me Pharaoh's bible was Slonimsky's "Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns." I bought the book and still use it for practise.

Great topic, Dirk!
I add my vote to 'Jazz Theory' by Mark Levine, 'Effortless Mastery' by Kenny Werner; 'Chords and Progressions for Jazz and Popular Guitar" by Arnie Berle.
I'd add a few:
"The Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar" by Jamie Andreas. Finally, a book you can trust that starts with the mechanics of fingering!
"The Berklee Jazz Chord Dictionary", by Rick Peckham. Somehow this one seemed more like a system to me, apart from all those books that claim to be complete.

For Me--
1/The Jazz Guitar Chord Bible, by Warren Nunes--Excellent chord reference, with examples for all and with harmonized scales for all keys at the back.

2/Jazz Rhythm Guitar-a systematic approach to chord progressions- By Roger Edison. Easy to understand lessons for Jazz virgins.

3/Berklee Jazz Guitar chord dictionary by Rick Peckham. Nice, handy sized reference-much more in it than looks at first glance.

We're missing the greatest Jazz Guitar chord voicing book of all time!
Guitar Comping by Barry Galbraith!
Amazon.com: Barry Galbraith - Guitar Comping: Barry Galbraith: Books

This has some of the nicest/smoothest voice leading ever!

Hi,
I am very fond of "Jazz Gitarre" written by Michael Sagmeister. It is written in German, so it may not be so popular in other than German speaking countries. I could highly recommend this book, it also has a CD enclosed and costed me (used) about 20,-- Euro via AMAZON.
It is my favourite book - music notation and tabulature!
Bye, Babs

Jazz Guitar Book - "Mickey Baker Jazz" Vol. 1 and 2

Jazz Improv Book - Forward Motion (From Bach to Bebop)" - Hal Galper

General Guitar - Fredrick Noad's "Solo Guitar Playing Volumes" 1 and 2

1. Jazz Guitar Books

Six Essential Fingerings for the Jazz Guitarist (Jimmy Bruno)
The Joe Pass Guitar Method (Joe Pass)
Voice Leading For Guitar (John Thomas)
Jazz Guitar Comping: Raising Your Chord Awareness (Andrew Green)

2. Guitar Books in General

The Gibson L5 (Adrian Ingram)
Gibson Guitars 100 Years of an American Icon (Walter Carter)
Blue Guitar (Ken Vose)


3. Music Books

The Real Book 6th Ed. (Hal Leonard)
Scales For Jazz Improvisation (Dan Haerle)
The Business of Music -- A Definitive Guide To The Music Industry (Krasilovsky, M. William)
The Music Business (Passman, Donald A)
Effortless Mastery (Kenny Werner)