Best guitar books for beginners

After the guitar itself, a method book is the purchase that most shapes what the first few months look like. It decides what you practice, in what order, and whether the first song you play is a folk melody read from notation or a four-chord strum along to a record. Get that order wrong for the player and the book goes on a shelf.

The good news is that this is the cheapest decision on the site. Every book below costs a small fraction of a beginner guitar, and a wrong pick is a lesson rather than a loss.

We have not worked through these books. What we compared is what each publisher says the book contains: page count, the chords and skills it covers, whether it teaches notation or tab, and what audio or video comes with it. Every figure on the product cards links to that publisher page, and the full method is on how we pick. Each pick also carries its Starter Path band.

The one decision that matters: chords first or reading first

Beginner guitar books split into two families, and the split matters far more than the publisher.

Chords-first books teach from chord boxes (a diagram of where the fingers go) and tablature (a map of which string and fret to play). You learn a handful of open chords, learn to strum them in time, and you are playing songs early. What you do not learn is how to read standard notation.

Reading-first books teach single-note melodies on standard notation in the first position, and add chords gradually alongside. Songs arrive more slowly, and the early material can feel like exercises. What you get in exchange is the ability to read music, which is what a school ensemble, a classical teacher or most traditional lessons will expect.

Neither is better. They answer different goals, and guitar is unusual in that you can play for years on chord boxes and tab alone — one of the reasons it is easier to start than people expect, as we cover in is guitar hard to learn.

Three questions settle it for almost everyone:

Is a teacher or a school program involved? Then buy the book they use, and nothing else. This one question overrides everything else on the page, and buying a different book first is the easiest way to waste money here.

Is the goal to strum and sing songs? Then chords-first. Many adult beginners are in this group, and a reading method will feel slow to them.

Is the goal classical guitar? Then a classical method, in standard notation, on a nylon-string guitar. The general methods here do not cover the classical right hand.

Five things to check on any guitar book

Before the picks, the criteria. These apply to any method book you are looking at, not only the seven here.

1. Which notation it teaches. Chord boxes, tab, standard notation, or some mix. The publisher’s page usually says, and Hal Leonard labels its tab editions as such. Match this to the decision above before anything else.

2. Whether audio comes with it. A beginner cannot tell from the page whether their rhythm is right; they need to hear it. Every book on this page comes with online audio. Hal Leonard’s books unlock it with a code printed inside each copy, which is worth checking before you buy one secondhand, and its PLAYBACK+ player can slow a track down without changing its pitch, which is more useful than it sounds.

3. How far it goes. The range on this page runs from 32 pages to 416. More is not automatically better: a first book you actually finish does more for motivation than a large one you abandon on page 60. Look at the last topic in the contents list, not only the page count.

4. Whether it is a course or a reference. A course decides the order for you. A reference answers questions in whatever order you ask them. Beginners need the first, and benefit from the second only once they know what to ask.

5. The edition. Popular method books stay in print for years and older editions keep circulating. Amazon’s results for the JustinGuitar course, for example, still show an older spiral-bound edition packaged with two CDs alongside the current online-audio edition. Buy the edition the publisher currently lists; every link on this page goes to one.

How we ranked these

Five criteria, in this order. They are our reading of each publisher’s published contents list, not the result of working through the books.

Gets you playing songs first, because practice that never starts to sound like music is where a beginner’s motivation runs out.

Works without a teacher second, since most people buying a guitar book are buying it instead of lessons, at least at first.

Scope for the money third: how much of the beginner stage one purchase covers.

Audio support fourth: demonstrations, play-along tracks, and video where it exists.

Room to grow last: whether there is a next book in the same series, so a learner who sticks with it does not have to start over.

The last two picks, for children and for classical guitar, rank lower because they serve narrower readers, not because they do their own jobs worse.

The picks

The JustinGuitar Beginner's Course#ad is the one we would hand most adults who bought a guitar to play songs. It is built around open chords, strumming and rhythm, reads from chord boxes and tab, and runs across 192 pages from choosing gear to fingerstyle patterns, blues and a first pentatonic scale. Audio demonstrates every chord, technique and exercise.

Its strongest point is not in the book. The author also teaches a beginner course free online in video, so when a page does not make sense there is a free lesson to watch. The honest cost follows from that: much of the material is free on his website, and what you are paying for is a printed, offline sequence. For many adults that is exactly the thing worth paying for. If reading music is the goal, this is the wrong book.

Guitar For Dummies, 4th Edition#ad is the widest book here by a distance: 416 pages covering how to choose a guitar, tuning, restringing and simple repairs, chord diagrams, notation and tab, several styles, and effects and amps, with more than 80 online videos and 35 audio tracks. It is the only pick with real video support built in.

What it is not is a course. It is a reference you navigate, and a beginner is the person least equipped to choose their own path through 416 pages. It is also the oldest edition on this page, published in June 2016, so the buying and gear chapters are the likeliest to have aged. We rank it second as the book to keep beside a method, not instead of one.

The Hal Leonard Guitar Method, Complete Edition#ad and Hal Leonard Guitar Method Book 1 (Second Edition)#ad are the same method bought two ways, and the choice between them is the Starter Path in miniature. Book 1 alone is the floor: 48 pages, first-position melody reading, rhythms through eighth notes, strumming, and the C, G, G7, D7 and Em chords, with online audio. The Complete Edition is enough: Books 1, 2 and 3 spiral-bound together, 144 pages, 164 full-band tracks, running on to power chords, fingerstyle, tablature, barre chords and string bends.

Buy Book 1 to find out whether a reading method suits you. Buy the Complete Edition if you already know it will, or if a teacher uses the series, and get a book that lies flat on a music stand into the bargain. The shared weakness is the reading-first order itself: single-note melodies come before strummed songs, and that is the stretch where impatient adults drift off. One practical note: Hal Leonard’s own store listed the Book 1 print edition on back order when we checked, while retail stock was available.

Alfred's Basic Guitar Method 1 (Third Edition)#ad is the long-running alternative, and it does the same job. Standard notation from the start, songs across blues, country, folk, jazz, rock and pop, online audio, and a longer first volume at 64 pages. Alfred sells video lessons and practice software as a separate edition; the one we link is audio only. There is no reason to own both this and Hal Leonard Book 1. Choose whichever your teacher uses, and with no teacher, either.

Guitar for Kids, Method Book 1#ad is built for young children: 32 pages, one concept at a time, standard notation on the first three strings, six chords, more than 30 play-along tracks, and 16 songs including Yellow Submarine, I’m a Believer and Hound Dog. It has no tablature at all. Hal Leonard does not publish an age range; retail listings have described it as ages 5 to 9. Expect to sit in with a child on this book, and a Book 2 exists for one who sticks with it.

The Hal Leonard Classical Guitar Method#ad by Paul Henry is the one pick that teaches the classical right hand: PIMA fingering, free stroke and rest stroke, two- and three-part music, and over 25 pieces by composers including Bach, Beethoven, Carcassi, Giuliani and Tarrega, with recorded accompaniments to play against. It has no tablature by design. It is the right book for a nylon-string player who wants classical repertoire, and the wrong one for somebody who bought a nylon-string guitar to strum pop songs.

Where the Starter Path bands fall for a book

The Starter Path we apply to instruments works for books too, with smaller numbers attached.

Below the floor: a songbook or a chord dictionary as the only book. Both assume you can already play. A chord chart shows you where the fingers go, and says nothing about how to move between shapes in time, which is the real wall in the first two months.

The floor: one method volume with audio. Hal Leonard Book 1, Alfred 1, Guitar for Kids and the classical method all sit here, and for a first purchase there is nothing wrong with that.

Enough: a complete beginner course in one purchase. The JustinGuitar course and the Hal Leonard Complete Edition sit here, with Guitar For Dummies as the reference that goes with either.

Where overspending starts: buying a method, a songbook, a theory book and an app subscription at once. The spending is small, and the cost is attention: four sources pulling in four directions is how beginners end up practicing nothing in order.

And the book cannot fix the guitar. A method that asks for a C chord on page 10 assumes a guitar you can press a C chord on, and a cheap instrument with high action makes every page harder than it should be. If that sounds familiar, read what a guitar setup is before you blame the book, or yourself.

A book, a video or a teacher

They do different jobs, and the efficient answer for most adults uses all three.

A book gives you order. It decides what comes next, which is the thing a beginner is worst at deciding and free video is worst at providing.

Video shows you hands. A photo of a chord shape is fine; watching someone change between two shapes in time is better, and that is why video support is one of our criteria.

A teacher diagnoses. They see the thumb wrapped over the neck, the collapsed wrist and the gripping hand that you cannot see yourself. A handful of lessons (one at the start, another a month or two in) covers the gap a book leaves, and the case for that hybrid is made in full in lessons or teaching yourself.

Matching the book to the player and the guitar

Children. For a young child the size of the guitar matters more than the book. A method written for small hands does not help on a guitar the child cannot reach around. Get the size right first with guitar sizes for kids, and the instruments are in best guitars for kids.

Nylon-string players. Owning a classical guitar does not mean you need a classical method. The general books above work on nylon strings; the classical method is for classical repertoire and technique. If you have not bought the guitar yet, the options are in best classical guitars for beginners.

Electric players. Every general method here works on electric. What changes is the amp and a few extra accessories, which are covered in guitar accessories you actually need.

Getting your money’s worth from a method book

Work in order. A method is a sequence, and skipping ahead to the page with the song you like is how gaps form. If a page is boring, do it quickly; do not skip it.

Use the audio every time. Play the track, play along with it, then play it without. Slow it down when you need to. This is what turns a book into something closer to a lesson.

Practice little and often. Fifteen minutes a day beats two hours on a Sunday, and a book open on a stand next to a guitar on a stand is the setup that makes daily practice happen. Realistic timelines are in how long it takes to learn guitar.

If one page stops you for two weeks, book a lesson. Being stuck for that long often means a physical problem the book cannot see, which is exactly what a teacher is for. The same goes for sore fingertips that do not settle; the causes are in why your guitar hurts your fingers.