The Advancing Guitarist by Mick Goodrick — Review

In 1991 I bought “The Advancing Guitarist” by Mick Goodrick. I pur­chased lots of instruc­tional books at that time. Matter of fact, I was obsessed with instruc­tional mate­r­ial. VHS tapes, books, music mag­a­zines... any­thing to help me get to grips with the mys­ter­ies of music.

The book puz­zled me.

What do I mean?

All of my other instruc­tional books pre­sented some sort of solu­tion. They pro­vided a method, a cer­tain way of doing things. Do this exer­cise and you’ll become the fastest gui­tarist in the known uni­verse. Learn this chord voic­ing and Miles Davis will call you to join his band.

More Questions than Answers

In “The Advancing Guitarist” there seemed to be more ques­tions than answers. It made me quite irri­tated at first. Why spend my money and then still have to deal with all those ques­tions about music? Even worse, more ques­tions after read­ing through the book because it raised cer­tain issues I wasn’t even aware of before.

Was I really sup­posed to answer those ques­tions by myself?

Throw in a quote like:

Explore coun­ter­point and har­monic mate­r­ial from all above modes and scales for at least 20 years.

— Mick Goodrick, The Advancing Guitarist, p37 —

Not exactly what an impa­tient begin­ner eager to mas­ter the gui­tar wants to hear.

Now, all those years later I sim­ply have to smile because I know that 20 years of explor­ing coun­ter­point and har­mony only let you real­ize you are scratch­ing the sur­face of the surface.

But don’t get me wrong...

Mick doesn’t just ask ques­tions or throw out some­what flip­pant sug­ges­tions in his book.

A wealth of infor­ma­tion is packed into the 120 pages. More than enough to keep you busy for a lifetime.

The book starts with an in-depth look at a hor­i­zon­tal play­ing approach, mov­ing up and down indi­vid­ual strings first, before com­bin­ing them into what Goodrick calls “mini-positions.” This is nicely tied in with a study of inter­vals and modes, includ­ing melodic and har­monic minor modes.

Next are tri­ads, 7^th chords, quar­tal har­mony, voic­ings, slash chords, etc...

As I said, enough mate­r­ial to keep you busy for a really long time.

This is not a book for an absolute begin­ner, although it would put you on a great path. The lack of tab­la­ture might make it dif­fi­cult to apply the mate­r­ial directly to the instru­ment and large parts of the book might be way over your head, at first.

My Personal Ritual

Personally, I’ve almost cre­ated some­thing of a rit­ual for myself.

At least once a year I pull out the book and skim through it. There’s always some­thing that grabs my atten­tion and I start work­ing on that topic. Something that I sim­ply did not catch, or was unable to com­pre­hend the last time. In a way, it’s like a com­pletely new book that’s releas­ing infor­ma­tion to me as my own musi­cal­ity grows and I become ready to finally absorb it.

“The Advancing Guitarist” is a book full of wis­dom that does not force any­thing upon you. It does not try to con­vert you to a cer­tain view or push some spe­cial play­ing tech­nique or gimmick.

It’s deep mate­r­ial for any gui­tarist will­ing to explore and exper­i­ment. The answers you’ll find will be your own and there­fore more mean­ing­ful to you. You’ll always get exactly what you are ready for.

The Hair in the Soup

After read­ing so far you already know how pos­i­tively I’m biased towards this book. Just have a look at the title of my blog to con­firm that sus­pi­cion.

But there are 2 upgrades I think this book would deserve.

1) Visual enhancements

The pre­sen­ta­tion of the mate­r­ial looks dry and too seri­ous. A visual over­haul would spruce up the feel of the book and make it a tad more friendly. I’m not talk­ing about adding a bunch of stu­pid pic­tures of great gui­tar play­ers as is com­mon in so many books to fill some pages. It’s just that re-grouping some of the infor­ma­tion into smaller chunks and adding visu­ally appeal­ing tables would increase the impact even more.

2) A CD with sound examples

Granted, it’s not a “99 Essential Blues Licks” type of book, so it’s not as obvi­ous to record an accom­pa­ny­ing CD. But all the top­ics like slash chords, pro­gres­sion cycles, vamps, frag­ments and per­mu­ta­tions could really ben­e­fit from some demo tracks with the mate­r­ial in use.

The Final Verdict

If you are a gui­tarist, then you absolutely need this book in your library.

Period.

No mat­ter what style you are into, or who you are influ­enced by, it sim­ply doesn’t mat­ter. It’s choke-full of con­cepts for you to explore. Just don’t expect any licks.

Even if you play another instru­ment you should at least check it out. Since you’ll have to adapt the mate­r­ial that’s pre­sented for gui­tar to your own instru­ment, this might even deepen the real­iza­tions you’ll have about music in general.

Timeless con­tent, a witty, insight­ful writ­ing style and a more than fair price of around $12 pro­vide great over­all value.

The Advancing Guitarist (Reference) (Paperback)
by Mick Goodrick
ISBN: 0881885894
Pages: 120

Price: USD 13.59
41 used & new avail­able from USD 10.73

| Average Rating: 4.5 | Number of Reviews: 42

Buy “The Advancing Guitarist” from Amazon!

Your Input

Also, please leave a com­ment if you’ve read the book.

• What kind of impact did it have?
• What did you learn from it?
• Any other instruc­tional books that you con­sider really impor­tant for any
  seri­ous musician?

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Tagged with: Advancing Guitarist • counterpoint • guitarist • harmony • method • Mick Goodrick

Filed under: Books • Reviews

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