Watt About Guitar Book 1, Beginner (112 pages) includes:  CD; chord chart; chart of notes on the guitar up to the 4th fret with music notation; and chart of Italian terms (not laminated).  The book teaches you how to read music, and contains many written exercises so you also learn to write music. There are 122 pieces to play on the guitar, ranging from simple exercise to get you started playing the guitar to repertoire pieces.  Keys covered are C, G, D and F.  Music styles included are:  Fingerstyle; Classical;  Folk;  Plectrum: Lead, Rhythm, Bass;  Group Work; and the beginnings of Spanish Guitar. This book is unique in that it is a tutor book / lesson book / work book / CD which includes music theory, worksheets, music exercises and pieces to play covering a range of styles.  A good guitarist should be able to play anything.

Book 1 starts on the 6th string and works to the 1st string, reading music from the beginning. This is so the pupil learns the correct hand position from the start.  Pupils who begin by learning the 1st string tend to hold their left hand incorrectly, and bad habits are very difficult to break. 

The book covers fingerstyle, classical, plectrum, lead, rhythm and bass guitar; from absolute Beginner to Intermediate.  Included are well known melodies, arpeggio fingerstyle exercises, classical repertoire pieces and group work for lead, rhythm and bass guitar.  Many of the pieces are Rhona Watt’s own compositions. 

Book 1 deals with single notes and melody lines first.  Each chapter begins with easy pieces and works up to more difficult pieces, to get pupils to read complicated-looking music from the beginning. If there is only simple-looking music in Book 1, the tendency is that when pupils face more complicated music, they switch off and don’t even try because it looks hard (they get a mental block).  If pupils learn to cope with music that looks complicated, but actually isn’t, hopefully they will get over their fear of reading music – just because it looks complicated doesn’t mean it is!  

If you teach someone to play a song, you have taught them something they will probably forget (whether it takes one year or ten years to forget). If you teach them to read music as well as play the songs, you have taught the pupil something that they will never forget (if they forget the piece, they can always refer back to the music), AND you will have taught them thousands of songs for the rest of their life – they can always go to a music shop, buy new pieces, and learn to play them on their own.  Get over the reading and get on with the playing.