Keeping a guitar in good repair--not to mention properly tuned and intonated--is always a challenge for new guitarists, and occasionally veterans of the instrument as well. Which is where Dan Erlewine's How To Make Your Guitar Play Great! comes into play. Erlewine has been around since the early 1960s, when he played with the likes of Mike Bloomfield (Erlewine unknowingly helped launch the popularity of the Gibson Les Paul when he sold Bloomfield his first Les Paul!) For years, Erlewine had a column in Guitar Player magazine, when he wasn't running his Ohio-based, but nationally frequented repair shop. These days, Dan alternates between writing books, running his shop, and offering sage-like advice in his own section of the Les Paul Forum on the 'Net.

While the encyclopedic nature of a book like The Guitar Handbook forces it to only devote a page or two to tuning and setting intonation, Erlewine has a whole chapter devoted to the subject. He also a full range of instructions, ranging from simple screwdriver adjustments, to fairly intensive procedures, in keeping a guitar up to snuff. There are a few things in Erlewine's book that I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to try myself, but at least I'll like I know what I'm talking the about next time I take my Les Paul or Telecaster into the shop.

Your Guitar And Your Pen

For some guitarists, songwriting is an obvious use of the instrument. While not strictly a book for guitarists, Songwriting For Dummies is also a good introduction to the basic of songwriting. It covers the basics of chord progressions, lyric and melody writing, and promoting your music, using lots of bullet points, cartoons, and the myriad of other methods employed by the popular Dummies format that has kept its publishers in good stead since the mid-1990s.

For a book on songwriting dedicated to guitar players, look no further than Rikky Rooksby's How to Write Songs on Guitar, an extremely well-researched look the history of rock, pop, and soul music, its chords and melodies, and how those notes fit on a guitar. Careful reading of Rooksby's book would benefit any guitarist interested in making music to support a vocalist, as well as learning how to best structure a tune. Rikky Rooksby, whose biography insists is his "real name, real spelling", and who's taught at Oxford, really, really knows his stuff. I've interviewed him for magazine articles, and was astounded at the breadth of his knowledge of popular music.

You might not make Mr. Clapton sweat, but careful reading of all of these books--and lots and lots of practice and dedication--will do much to help push you towards virtuoso land. Of course at some point, recording your new found chops and songwriting skill might be a goal. But that's a separate article in and of itself...