Reddit reviews The Practical Guide to Modern Music Theory for Guitarists: Second Edition

Quality is much more important than quantity. You can play a ton of guitar without really learning very much. Conversely, you can get a huge amount of benefit from fairly short practice sessions.

1. Get a metronome and use it. You don't really know how to play something until you can play it cleanly and at tempo. When learning something, play it at the slowest tempo you can manage and gradually increase the tempo. Rhythm is a vitally important part of guitar technique that is often overlooked. You shouldn't always use the metronome as you can become dependent on it, but it is an essential practice tool.
   
   
2. Mix it up. Start a practice session with some scales and arpeggios to warm up, move on to a piece you're learning and finish with something that you know quite well. There's strong scientific evidence to show that alternating between different kinds of practice is much more effective than solid blocks.
   
   
3. Get a teacher. Teaching yourself is fine, but a good teacher can save you a huge amount of frustration and wasted effort. Books and YouTube videos are great resources, but they can't spot problems with your technique or figure out what obstacles you need to overcome.
   
   
4. Get out of your comfort zone. Learn songs in different genres, learn styles that you wouldn't normally play. Start playing with other musicians and performing live before you think you're ready. There's no substitute for the fun of jamming with a friend or the challenge of playing in front of an audience.
   
   
5. Learn theory. Not everyone enjoys it, but it makes a huge difference to your competence as a musician. At the very least, you should aim to know all the notes on the fretboard, the major and minor scales, the dorian and mixolydian modes and be able to recognise and construct intervals and chords. There are many approaches to learning theory, but I'd suggest this book as a good starting point.

I have this one at the moment

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1503319210/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472771251&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=guitar+theory

Excuse the formatting, on mobile and I suck at the app!

It's been pretty good so far, makes a lot of sense and I'm definitely learning. That being said I've not really had to knuckle down and actually study anything since uni, so it's taking longer than I'd like to!

Good luck :)

This is a classic. This is a more recent one , and it's always a good idea to have at least two sources for theory.

Remember that making music is more about learning songs, listening and copying - i.e., learning the practices by ear (or from songbooks). Theory will give you all the terminology to help organise the information, to make sense of what you're learning, but you can actually make music (compose or improvise) with very little theory knowledge - just by copying the sounds you like. That's how most of the great pop/rock songwriters (and guitar improvisers) learned their craft.

I've been using The Practical Guide to Music Theory for Guitarists but Joseph Alexander . It's helped me with how chords are constructed and how intervals relate to harmonization. It builds slowly, is in plain English and has many practical examples.

I've been playing for not very long, less than a year.

The Practical Guide to Modern Music Theory for Guitarists: Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1503319210/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_uf7OCbJKWXQRK

It sounds like you have a good foundation both in what you have played and your knowledge of tab. I’m assuming that you mean ‘solo’ fingerstyle guitar (just one guitar but no voice) or fingerstyle as accompaniment to singing. In any case, the best place to start is with Travis Picking. More specifically, the styles of “Merle Travis” and “Chet Atkins.” Learning Travis Picking, even if you don’t pursue it, is an essential foundation to everything else you will do. An online program called True Fire (https://truefire.com) is an incredible place to go and is very oriented toward teaching you fingerstyle. Even Tommy Emmanuel teaches there! Beyond that, just listen to others. Listen closely to many pickers of many genres and styles, then pick and choose what you do and don’t like to create your own style. Finally, learn basic music theory (if you haven’t already). Music theory is in my opinion, a very important but often missed aspect of guitar. I wish you good luck, and I hope you found this helpful!

Some supplementary books I would recommend:

For music theory: https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Modern-Theory-Guitarists/dp/1503319210?keywords=Guitar+music+theory&qid=1540820080&sr=8-6&ref=sr_1_6

For Merle Travis Style: https://www.amazon.com/Mel-Merle-Travis-Guitar-Style/dp/078660266X?crid=1FDIX0PBK0ZS5&keywords=merle+travis+guitar+style&qid=1540819852&sprefix=Merle+Travis+guit%2Caps%2C164&sr=8-1&ref=sr_1_1

For Chet Atkins Style: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Chet-Atkins-Guitar-Method/dp/0786691476?keywords=Chet+Atkins+method&qid=1540819891&sr=8-1&ref=sr_1_1