Don King
Guitar teacher, performer, music composer and arranger.
Over many years of teaching, I have been fortunate enough to work with many fantastic and talented students. This has given me a keen appreciation for what works, and what doesn’t work so well in igniting and nurturing students’ enthusiasm, skill and growth as musicians.
Above all, I wanted my work to inspire a love and understanding of music, and to give impetus and direction for further study.
This goal led me to break with tradition when designing these books; both for my own students and for other students and teachers of guitar around the world.
Most guitar teaching methods concentrate on just one style. (For example, solo classical, plectrum lead rock, folk strumming, solo blues and so on).
This is fine for an already experienced guitarist who is perfecting that chosen style, but for the beginner, I have found that specialising too soon can severely limit potential and produce students with quite a narrow outlook, which impedes any real understanding of music. Frankly, limiting students to just one style can also prove rather boring after a while.
I believe that a new approach is needed.
We live in an exciting age, full of potential for musicians. For the first time in history we have access to all the cultures of the world, past and present. This gives us a marvellous musical opportunity.
I liken my beginning guitar students to first-time travellers setting out to explore the world of music (in time as well as space) – ideally with a good teacher, but hopefully also with at least one or two good guitar learning books as a travel guide.
When they have finished their travels, students have gained a true appreciation and understanding of all the richness that the musical world has to offer, and a much deeper basis for choosing whatever place within it that they will decide to call ‘home’.
There is nothing like studying an elegant gavotte by Bach one week, and perhaps a hard-driving rock tune or a syncopated African rhythm the next, to really stretch a student’s imagination and generate lots of enthusiasm for what the next lessons will bring!
As they discover a diversity of new sounds from many different times and places, students naturally gain an appreciation and understanding of all music. This benefits and enhances later specialised study.
And importantly, this approach is fun! It’s never boring.
Therefore, the theme of the Play the Guitar books is exploration!
As well as modern American guitar styles such as blues, rock, ragtime and country and western, you’ll find the rich heritage of European music from the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods.
There are traditional folk tunes from England, Wales, America and Australia, plus exciting rhythms and melodies from Spain, Latin America, Mexico, the West Indies, the Middle East, Africa and Japan.
There is another significant break with tradition that you’ll find in these books…
Almost all guitar books are designed for individual tuition (even if they say “suitable for class tuition” on the cover). This is because they concentrate on solo playing or on teacher and student duets.
Solo work is of course very important, but just as it is fun and beneficial to travel with friends, group learning has many advantages. In particular, ensemble playing develops facility in sight-reading, listening skills and the ability to keep in time.
For this reason, I have aimed to make the ‘Play the Guitar’ books especially suited for group work by giving equal importance to solos, duets, trios and quartets.
Because I wanted to also make the books valuable for private teachers working with individual students on a one-to-one basis, I have designed most of the quartets and trios to work perfectly well as teacher/student duets. This means that private teachers can gain the full advantage of the wide range of teaching material contained in the books.
Singing is another important aspect in developing musicianship. Therefore I have included many songs with a variety of accompaniment styles. This also helps the student gain knowledge of chord progressions and harmony – a vital aspect of musical understanding. All the songs can also be played as purely instrumental duets if preferred.
Finally, I’d like to mention how much pleasure I have had in writing the ‘Play the Guitar ‘books – I have been greatly encouraged by their continued success, and it has been marvellous to hear from teachers who have written to tell me about the results they are having.
If you are a teacher and haven’t yet discovered these books, I do hope that you will try them out with your beginning and intermediate students. And I would love to hear how you have found them in your own teaching work!