Start Something New Boutique

2014 is here and with a new year people tend to set new goals of things that they want to do.   DK Canada currently have a new boutique for you to choose something new to start this year.  In the Start Something New Boutique at DK Canada you will find something for you with a few clicks.  In that special boutique you will find books about running, boosting your brain, yoga, stretching, wine, cake decorating, crochet, astronomy, gardening, crafts, photography, beading, cooking, baking, learning a new language, woodworking, preserving and much more.   The book that caught my eye in the Start Something New Boutique was The Complete Guitar Manual.

Let’s go back in time a little bit so I can tell you more about how music has entered in our home.   A few months back, I spotted a note from someone in the Homeschool FREE Market for our town on facebook.   The note was saying that the woman had an electric guitar to give away with an amp.   Knowing that my husband wanted to learn guitar I asked him if he would like to have it.   He said sure and I quickly emailed her to let her know we could pick it up.   That same day, we drove to go pick up the guitar.   The strings needed to get changed and we brought it to a music store near our place.   When the guy learned that we got it for free, he told us we had an amazing deal since it was a guitar of about 350$. 

My husband looked for a course on the internet and found one that he enjoys with our two older sons.   Problem was…. the guitar had to be shared between the three of them.    Seeing how the boys practiced and learned with him, we had the idea of getting them a guitar each for Christmas.   It was close to Christmas day when we finally got to two electric guitars – trading for comics and other things.   But the boys were delighted when they got their big gifts on Christmas morning.   And dad had taken the time to wrap them up nicely.  They were not expecting this whatsoever.  Along with guitars, we are now have a drum set and a keyboard.   Funny how things happens something.

Anyhow, though the oldest two boys are learning guitar with dad over the internet with Justin as their teacher, I thought that a book on guitar would be nice to have too.    That’s the main reason why I picked the book The Complete Guitar Manual from the Start Something New Boutique.  Let’s check what the book covers together.

The Complete Guitar Manual, published at DK Canada, covers every aspect of learning how to play the guitar, from choosing an instrument and using a pick for the first time to starting a band and writing your own music.  The book is essentially a complete course of professional lessons that works both as a personal tutor and a comprehensive textbook.  The Complete Guitar Manual is a self improvement guide for all aspiring guitar players and could be a great tool for aspiring guitarists and professionals alike.  It includes techniques and step by step photographic instructions that help you build new skills or hone existing ones as well as a DVD with video sequences showing how to play and how it should sound.

For the benefit of my readers, I have included the Table of Contents.

• Chapter one – The Kit:  The guitar, anatomy of an acoustic guitar, anatomy of an electric guitar, acoustics guitars, semi-acoustic guitars, electric guitars, tone and hardware, buying a guitar, guitar amplifiers, anatomy of an amplifier, guitar effects.
• Chapter two – Essential Theory: How music works, Scales and keys, Notation and tab, Forming chords, Rhythm and time.
• Chapter three – The Sessions:  Essentially you will have ten sessions to follow through with lessons in each of them.  Each sessions are clearly marked to refer to the DVD included in the book.   You will learn the basics of playing guitar and slowly but surely advanced in more chords and playing songs.
• Chapter four – Becoming an Artist: Covering songs and writing original material, playing in public, forming a band, home recording, and getting your music out there.
• Chapter five –Guitar Maintenance: Choosing and fitting strings, cleaning and storing guitars, setting up your guitar, customizing and upgrading your guitar.
• Chapter six – Useful Resources: Chord directory, scale directory, key signatures, notation decoder.

As you can see this book will cover numerous aspects of learning the guitar.   I showed this book to my husband and he was immediately intrigue and interested by it.   He is getting back playing the guitar as he used to have lessons when he was younger.  He read part of the book already and learned a thing or two from it.   He told me that this will be a book that he will go back to it in order to better understand guitars and learn from it.

The Complete Guitar Manual will give you the motivation to discover more about this musical instrument and hopefully develop a new talent in 2014.

  

Disclaimer: Thanks to DK Canada for sending me the above mentioned title for review purposes. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.