Christopher Nicklin Guitar Ped The Sor method takes a very scientific approach to explaining the guitar and

how to play it. At the beginning he spends many pages describing the different parts of the guitar. I do not really think this is useful for a player but it is thought out. Then he gets into the basics of sitting position, hand position, and tone productions. He takes a very scientific approach and describes every single thing in very close detail. He really leaves nothing out in this method. He tells how to fret each string and how to use both hands together as well as how the elbow should be moved. Then he starts talking about the theory of thirds and sixths as well as how he relates then to the guitar. The very beginning is so meticulous that he leaves nothing out for a player to get confused on. If a player wanted to learn guitar by himself or herself they probably could with this method just because he describes absolutely everything. On the negative side, he goes pages and pages without actually giving the student an opportunity to play the guitar. This could present problems because the student could become very bored rather quick just reading without getting to play. It is just too much information. For an analytical person it is great but for a young child they would be just lost. It is interesting that once a person gets into the examples one would be lost again for the opposite reason. Sor really does not explain anything about the playing examples once one gets into them. They just say thirds or something like that. It should also be noted that some of the examples are just too hard for a first year guitarist. He just throws you off the deep end to a certain extent. It really is more of a scientific book rather than a

practical book for learning the guitar. It has too much information at the beginning and not enough at the end so in essence it is too waited on either side. Aguado Aguado is a lot less heavy on the theory. In the preface he says this book is for amateurs and that is definitely apartment. He goes through over view information about the guitar for a couple of pages and then around page ten gives the guitarist something to play. What is really like is that he breaks the piece up into two parts for the reader. He also gives the way that he would practice the piece. This was all very brilliant for the ways of teaching. It shows that he put time in thinking about how the amateur would read the book. Then he brings the two parts together so that the person at the very beginning can play a piece. His next few lessons are variations on the same concept of idea so the reader is not learning to much more about the piece. It helps break down the process into chunks so the reader does not fell like they have been thrown off the deep end in regards to playing. In each lesson he explains what the exercise is doing for the student. He cites any difficult parts, which is always a good idea. I noticed he really does not have any exercises in the music, which could be good or bad. It is good in the sense that the student is getting to make music at the beginning so it is less likely for them to get bored. However, they might get bogged down by the piece in a way that they might not learn the techniques properly. It would have been nice to see the techniques by themselves next to the piece. For this reason it would be important to have a teacher guide one through these lessons to make sure the student does not become overwhelmed by the pieces and makes sure they learn them well. Have said that this book also teaches musical ideas like

appoggiaturas well as well as other musical ideas. I believe this method is well pace. It has a lot of pluses. Pujol The pujol is the all around complete method. The first book of the two does not even really give the reader exercises. It first gives all the possible information about the guitar. It talks about plucking the string, quality of sound, quality of guitars, etc Pujol even gets into how one should study and the importance of not wasting ones own time. How ever even though the first book does not really getting into playing it is not dry. It actually moves forward and has lots of visuals for the reader so they do not get bogged down by the reading. In the second book it gets into the playing of the guitar. It grades itself well by starting off with the very basics of the guitar. It starts with just plucking one string. As it progresses it adds the thumb and makes sure that it integrates very slowly. No technique pops out as overbearing if one goes through the sequential manner of the book. The book to me is similar to todays An Idiots Guide to In this case it is an idiots guide to guitar. One thing that could be improved upon in the book is to have the studies from the end of the book be integrated throughout the book. For example, study one should be right after the first or third exercises in book two. These little things would have helped. I do not know if method book one could really be called a method book. If anything it is an encyclopedia of everything would want to know about the guitar, including early notation, how to ornament slurs, what to look for in a piece and more. In some ways the first book is more than a guitar book but is also a book on performance

practice and most esoteric ideas that are not easily discussed. It should be noted that it does a very good job discussing these topics and in general is very concise. Noad One thing that jumped out to me right of the back is that some of the information is outdated and kind of weird. For example, men and women are supposed to sit differently while playing the guitar. Obviously it was because women are wearing skirts and wanted to be modest. Having said this everything else is really great about this method. It has duo exercises for teachers and student, which I think is a really great idea. They have plenty of pictures to show how to do the different finger strokes right. It really goes to the basics of music when it comes to the guitar and also in the guitarists perspective. For example, it starts with playing a piece on just the open strings, frets, and then it adds slurs. This book does a good job teaching things with pieces rather than pure exercises. However, it does this by sacrificing how many solo pieces there are in the begging of the book. Instead the student is suppose to play with the teacher. In general this book is written with the idea of learn with a teacher. Once one reaches a certain point in the method lots of solo pieces start to show up. Also the book has only classical and baroque pieces throughout the book. It is not till the end that there are romantic pieces. There are three to be exact. I feel like there could have been more within this book because of the fact that this is the most modern of the four books. One big thing about this method is it really does not give extraneous information. It does not take a hundred pages to get to play the guitar. It tells you how to sit, tune,

read, and play a string and then a person is off to the races. This is great for young children or someone that is more of a person that just wants a light hobby. Comparison All the methods are good in their own way. If one wants a theoretical book I would go with the Sor. It is interesting but I feel like all the other methods do a better job. The Pujol is just as complete as the Sor but makes it much more accessible. Part of the reason is the resources that Pujol had with having pictures in the book as well as a good two hundred years of guitar information to draw upon. Sor was kind one of the pioneers, so it would not be as good in my opinion. Having said this Sor does not think in the perspective of the reader but more in the perspective of a master. Because of this the book tends to bog the reader down. At the time the Aguado method seems to be the best method at the time for beginners. It is similar to he Noad where it gives one the basic information and then one is off playing. I feel like the Pujol draws upon the Sor in ideals of giving lots of information and theory about all these subjects. However, like I said before the Pujol is much more manageable. In a way the Pujol and the Noad improved upon those old methods and up dated them for modern audiences in mind. One thing that made a huge amount of difference for the later methods compared to the early methods was the use of pictures. It gave the reader more ways to learn rather than having to rely on reading something. Having said that the older to methods just did not have that option at the time. In general for people that just want to pick up the guitar and start playing then the Aguado and the Noad are for them. They give you just the bare information to play and then build the rest later. They are probably the better to methods for children in mind.

Obviously the Noad is best for children now because it was written for the modern audience in mind. It I had an adult student then I thing that the Pujol might be the better method. I feel like and adult would understand all this information a lot better than a child. The have the attention span that a child just would not have. Also adults would see the importance of exercises a lot more than a child so they would probably do then, where as the Noad is great because it tries to make everything music so the student is more likely to play the pieces. This is the one thing that the Pujol does not have going for it because it does not have enough piece for a student to play in that way it is more dry than the Noad and Aguado. The Sor however is the driest of them all. It really does not have much going for it compared to the other methods. I fell like all the other methods collectively teach better than the Sor method. For this reason I would not suggest the Sor method to anyone. The thing I think it is most useful for now is just historical context, but that is pretty much it. Something that I think is very important in a method book is how to break down actions of how to do things. This is one thing I thought the Aguado did a remarkable job on. The best example is when he took a small piece of music and broke it into two parts. He really showed how to practice a piece. I believe the Noad also does a good job f it, especially with the pictures of the different finger strokes. I think Pujol could do a better job but I believe the reason it does not hold the persons hand on certain techniques is because the player has to discover to a certain degree how an action works for them. There will be a lot of things all players should do that do not vary but nail shape and things like that need to be developed by the individual themselves.

I think in the future I will be using the Noad and the Pujol. I think the Noad is the best for an absolute beginner, where as the Pujol is great for adults and player that are doing it for more than just a hobby.