The Only Time I'm Happy's When I Play My Guitar - Page 3

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...

Article Author: Ed Driscoll

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