FOR BEGINNERS ONLY. NOT RECOMMENDED FOR INTERMEDIATE OR ADVANCED PLAYERS!!!
592996
Great violin for a beginner! Sounds low quality but sounds very violin decent! Pegs were very loose in the beginning so had to push them in very hard while turning in order to keep in the tune you want. The only thing I dislike about it is that the violin may not be measured correctly for the string area. For example, the strings take a bit of effort to push in order to get a clear tone. It's either the places where the strings rest are too tall, or the violin requires it to be tight. I've tried different sets of new bridges and that isn't the case. Also, strings D and A may be too short or strings G and E may be too high as in height since when I tried to play in the high notes on strings D and A, it is very difficult to play without hitting the other strings so I have to play the strings closer to the bridge. This violin is certainly for beginners, but not recommended at all for intermediate or advanced players as it becomes difficult to play, feel, and admire the sound.
2780148
I bought three uke books...but this one seems extremely hard. I also purchased "Elvis Presley for ukulele," and "Easy Classical Ukulele Solos." Both those books are much easier to play. I started playing from the "Classical" book in just 5 minutes. This book (figerstyle solos) however has too many hard songs and no easy ones. I really don't know if I will ever get to this level to use this book, but hope to some day. Wish I had bought a different book though. Even with TABS this book is hard.
1450666
This game would likely be very enjoyable for someone who already knows how to play, however the idea of it being a way to learn is laughable. I've played for a couple days now, and so far have not seen a single actual piece of tablature. If you mean to learn, consider "self taught" literature or actual lessons. The manner in which it prompts you to play notes greatly resembles guitar hero, and is not productive if you intend to play actual sheet music later on. It does however teach some chords and basic techniques, but could definitely use more useful lessons for beginners.
445996
NOT something I'd recommend for beginners. One reason I would mark it down is because it seemed to be advertized as being a good book for the intermediate begginers but I knew better. The reason I did mark it down was because the cd tracks sound like a computer program and not like a guitar. Overall pleasant short tunes.
4791899
Did not meet my needs, was more for a student and not someone that plays professionally I would not buy this or recommend it to anyone unless you are a young teenager starting out.
1943263
Hugely disappointing product for a beginner. Sequence of lessons lost early on. Lessons and quizzes quickly jumped to a more advanced level requiring familiarity with keys not yet introduced. e-mail support from Broderbund proved entirely unhelpful as they failed to address the problem. Online customer reviews were identifying this problem in 2008 and it has not been resolved. Should Amazon still be marketing this product which is not fit for purpose for a beginner?
3495150
This book is better titled How to convert to 2 over1 GF for bridge players. Even though it recommends 2 over 1 for beginners, it starts using terms that only seasoned bridge players use.  I am trying to relearn the best card game ever after a 40 year absence.  I would definitely NOT recommend this to a beginner.
4938365
Beginners beware!  There are no explanations in this book.  "Sharpen Your Tactics" is simply a book of chess problems, six per page, and a one-line solution in the back.  Spend a couple of days with Part 1 of Seirawan's "Winning Chess Tactics" before tackling this tome.
I have not yet made it through the book, but I have reached a point (mid 400s) where the level of difficulty is slowing me down.  The gradual progression in difficulty and the repetition of important ideas (i.e., the same move to checkmate over and over again, in different positions) makes me appreciate how much time and thought was put into this volume.
For people who are as bad as I am (haven't played any tournies, but I am rated around 1250 on Yahoo's chess site), I would also recommend getting the Chessmaster 9000 software to help out.  Sometimes I just couldn't figure out how a position wins even after looking at the solution, or I couldn't figure out why the solution I came up with wasn't just as good.  Setting up the position in Chessmaster 9000 and stepping through the variations has been *very* helpful.  Now I just wish that someone would create a CD with all of the chess positions in PGN format....
3604700
When they say beginner, they mean it.  This thing teaches you like 6 to 8 chords and then it ends.  Luckily it was only 5.99 where I bought it.
4701117
Beware that this instruction book is not geared to a beginning guitarist. To get the most out of this book, you have to have a lot of pre-experience with barre chords, string bending, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, arpeggios, and alternate picking at sixteenth note speeds. There is not any instruction on how to do these things except for the tabs and the CD that lets you hear what the lick should sound like. A budding guitarist could easily get frustrated and give up too quickly because these licks are just too advanced from the start. One lick could take an entire week or more to learn and play well. An advanced player who already possesses these skills won't have any problems with these licks and would be able to assimilate the material more easily and get the most out of what this book is really intended for. My suggestion is to first spend a year with Guitar Aerobics before introducing yourself to this book. I rate the book with 3 stars because I felt that there should be some claim that the buyer have a certain prerequisite skill level before making the purchase.
1983065
I reviewed the expanded preview of this book available to Prime Members, which allowed me to look at 4 - 5 of the pieces.  These were not arrangements, only single note melodies.  This could be a useful book for a complete beginner to fingerstyle playing, but for anyone beyond a beginner, the "arrangements" are so simple they probably won't be challenging to play, and not very satisfying to hear.
262085
I'm a beginning mandolin player, and figured it might be fun to switch from the folk music I've been playing and play some more modern tunes.

First, don't make the mistake I made: the other publisher's mandolin books are all contained in this book. You'll be wasting money if you buy this and any other mando book from this publisher.

The Good:

* Good selection- There's a wide smattering of songs, and probably several that you know/like. I will say that it skews towards late 70's through mid 80's music. The band list should give you a good idea.

* Good price- It's not terribly expensive.

The Bad

* Not spiral-bound- The book doesn't like to stay open. Which sucks.

* Reproduces music found in other books from this publisher and is very coy about what it does and doesn't contain.

* Not really a beginner's book- Probably more intermediate than beginner. There's a *lot* of notation here that has no explanation for a beginner. Which leads me to the next point.

* Not much tab- I saved the biggest for last. Most of the tab in this book is maybe a measure or two long, and the rest of the song has some chord notation, but that's it. For a book that's supposed to be full of tab, I'd say 80% of the music herein is all traditional notation. Several songs contain no tab at all. It's just frustrating because while I'm learning standard notation, I can't sight read and am a ways away from it, so most of this book is useless for me until I develop my skillset.

So here's the thing. Can you read standard notation fairly well? This book might be worth it. Looking for a book of tab? Skip it.
180449
This is NOT a book for beginners and is not complete enough for users who are refreshing their knowledge.  Buy something else.
3786531
About me and my guitar goals: I am a retired adult beginner guitar student. I am learning to read sheet music along with learning guitar.  I play both an electric and steel stringed acoustic guitar.  I spend about 60 minutes a day on practice 6 days a week. (Once my fingers toughened up)

I began with the Hal Leonard Guitar Method, Complete Edition: Books & CD's 1, 2 and 3. $13.06 here on Amazon.  After seeing the Learn & Master Guitar website, and reading their testimonials, I decided to buy the course, and back-burner the Hal Leonard course after just a couple of days.

Conclusion for L&M Guitar:  I have used the complete Learn & Master Guitar course (20 DVDs, and 5 Jam along CDs) for about 8 months now. (List price $249.00. Sometimes on sale for $149)  I gave it 3 stars, mostly for price vs. performance. I finally just moved back to the Hal Leonard Guitar Method, and use the L&M Guitar as a supplement for practice materials.  I wish I had just saved my money on L&M Guitar.  Read on if you want additional details.

I don't intend this to be a thorough review of the product.  Others have already done that very well.  Im just going to cover some areas I think were not covered as thoroughly as I would have liked if I was still in purchase mode.

1) The course is average in content and presentation, but overpriced.
2) The 2 books are available as downloadable PDFs.  Nice!
3) Does not take advantage of current technologies well.  Theyre stuck 15 years ago.
4) The course feels disjointed due to the "bonus" materials being packaged separately.
5) The course is not paced well.  I spent 1-2 weeks each in sessions 1-3, and 5 months in session 4.
6) The course, like most, is very light on what and how to practice each day.
7) I found the highly touted forums to be fairly useless, as the responses to questions tend to be trite, and occasionally hostile.
8)  Most students seem to quit the course prior to completing session 4.  (they quit posting in the forum)

Course Table of Contents  20 sessions:
1) Starting off right
2) Reading Music & notes on the 1st & 2nd strings
3) Notes on the 3rd & 4th strings
4) Notes on the 5th & 6th strings + sharps, flats, natural signs, etc.
5) Basic Open Chords
6) Minor Seventh & suspended Chords
7) Barre Chords on the 6th string
8) Barre Chords on the 5th string
9) The secret to great strumming
10) Fingerstyle Guitar
11) Pentatonic Scales
12) Advanced Chords
13) Playing the blues
14) Giving your playing some style
15) Electric Guitars
16) Advanced Strumming
17) Going beyond the first position
18) Jazz
19) Soloing
20) All the chords you need to know

Other materials I use for study and practice:
1) Amazing slow downer iPhone app  slows music down to play along with
2) Learn Notes! iPhone app  music sight-reading app
3) Fret Tester iPhone app  learn the fretboard
4) One Minute Changes iPhone app  Learn to move from chord to chord quickly
5) Time Trainer iPhone app  metronome and more
6) Hal Leonard Guitar Method, Complete Edition: Books & CD's 1, 2 and 3
7) Hal Leonard Easy Pop Melodies  3 books go with the HL course for additional practice materials.  Get the ones with the CD!
3804474
I think this book and DVD will only be useful for a beginning or an intermediate player at best.  I bought this book along with two other books -- Guitar Fretboard Workbook and The BEAD Method of Fretboard Mastery -- in an effort to become more familiar with the guitar fretboard.  For many years, I've been stuck at the intermediate level, relying mainly on memorized patterns to get around.  I wanted to break away from that and be able to instantly find and identify notes and intervals anywhere along the fretboard.  Sadly, Fretboard Logic did not help me achieve this goal.

For beginning guitar players, learning about scales and chords can be a daunting task, and I think some of the patterns and abstractions found in this book may be very useful to them.  After all, most beginners don't want to sit down with workbooks or learn how to sight read -- they just want to play some rock songs, and this book can probably help them achieve that quicker.  However, the book becomes far less useful when it goes beyond simple major/minor chords and pentatonic scales.  In fact, the extra level of abstraction starts to make things even MORE complex than they would be without it.  Using fretboard logic, playing in E Phrygian may translate to playing in the G position of the C major scale with the root at the 3rd.  It's easier just to memorize the notes on the fretboard and the intervals of the Phrygian scale.  When you get right down to it, fretboard logic is just another position/pattern based method.  I don't really see any added benefit to using the CAGED system, but if anyone can explain it to me, I'm willing to listen.

I got a little more use out of the two other books that I purchased (mentioned above).  The Guitar Fretboard Workbook in particular introduces many of the same insights found here, but does a better job of presenting them.  Instead of the CAGED sequence, it numbers the positions based on the root notes.  While this may not seem to like a big difference, I found that identifying positions by numbers is far less confusing than identifying them by their open chord shapes.

I want to add that I bought this book and DVD (verified purchase) after reading many glowing reviews, and I was disappointed to find that the book had nothing new to teach me.  I believe my disappointment stems mainly from a misunderstanding of the book's intent.  Fretboard Logic IS NOT a fretboard trainer.  It doesn't even explain "the reasoning behind the guitar's unique tuning".  Rather, its real intent is to give new guitarists a gentle introduction to chords and scales, and provide them with some simple tools to apply that knowledge.  Therefore, if you already have a basic knowledge of music theory and you are relatively comfortable with pentatonic and diatonic scales, you will not find much use out of this book.  I think the book can be okay for beginners, especially for those who are "visual learners".  However, there are plenty of books/DVDs out there that are as good or better.

For guitarists who are looking for a freboard trainer type book, both the Guitar Fretboard Workbook and the BEAD book were okay, but I think you're better off simply learning how to sight read and working through a book like "A Modern Method for Guitar".
1412499
This guitar was ok for like a kid maybe, but if your wanting to learn how to play, and be good at it, DONT buy this one! It's mainly for children!!
482399
Not a book for a beginner. I purchased this for an adult piano student who is a beginner and we are having to wait to use it because it is too difficult!