Les Paul was once asked if anybody taught him his incredible knowledge of electronics as it relates to music. And he instantly replied, "Just the library. I'm a real book man. If it's in a book, I can get it." And over the years, I've found that to be great advice. Over the past 20 years, I've read dozens and dozens of music books, and a few of these have permanently remained on my shelf.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, budding guitarists such as Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton had little to go on but their ears and trial and error; rock and roll was a new form of music, with little or no written instruction. Today however, it's a different ballgame. For guidance, there's a host of magazines, instructional tapes, CDs, DVDs, and books available.
The following are a few of the books that over the years have influenced my musical knowledge, and that I keep coming back to, to this day. This is purely a subjective list; hopefully you'll find some of them of interest as well, but obviously, I can't guarantee that they'll all resonate with you the same way they did for me.
So — drum roll please, Mr. Shaffer! — from the home office in EMI's Abbey Road Studios...here are Ed's top 10 books on guitar and recording! (The order is purely chronological, based on date of publication.)
10. Rock Hardware: In 1981, I purchased this book about a year before actually playing guitar. It was written by Tony Bacon, who's still writing music books today (his recent 50 Years Of The Gibson Les Paul and Six Decades of the Fender Telecaster are fun reads). Rock Hardware as its title implies, serves as a great overview of the equipment used in both live music and recording, and is a large, colorful, and heavily illustrated book. (How can you knock a book whose first photo shows Elliot Easton of the seminal new wave group The Cars literally up to his neck in electric guitars?)
The only strike against the original edition of the book is that at 25 years old, the technology illustrated is a bit dated. Traditional instruments (guitar, bass, drums, sax, woodwinds) haven't changed too radically, but the 1980s saw an explosion in synthesizer and recording technology whose pace has only accelerated, as Moore's Law is the law in the recording industry — as it is in all other industries. Fortunately, it was updated in 1996 by Bacon.
9. The Guitar Handbook: Ralph Denyer's Guitar Handbook was my personal entry into the world of music in late 1982, when I innocently bought it one day as I was sagging off from school and driving to the Moorestown Mall to kill an otherwise ordinary afternoon. Sitting alone in McDonald's after purchasing it, I couldn't believe my good fortune: laid out in his book was a clear and thorough introduction to both the basics of what makes a guitar function, who its great innovators in popular music where, what its most important models have been, and how amplifiers and other electronic devices work.
Article comments
1 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Great, well-written article and overview, jammed-packed with info and expertise. Thanks.