Teach Yourself Lead Guitar with CD distributed by Santorella Publications is a self-taught guide to playing lead guitar. Rather than offer a description from the publishers prospective, we thought we would let the author, Mr. Paul J. Newman tell you in his own words.
Foreword by the author, Mr. Paul J. Newman
Teach Yourself Lead Guitar is about playing lead guitar; so what will you find here? It is not a book of scales - -but there are lots of them inside. Nor is it about guitar riffs and licks - - yet many of the musical illustrations are riffs and licks. We talk music theory quite a bit as well - - but no, this is not a theory book.
Teach Yourself Lead Guitar is a “guide book”. We’ll take you around lead guitar country, showing you the landscape, describing the things we come across, hopefully anticipating your questions with the answers.
If you’ve picked up this book then you’re already into music so we don’t need to tell you what a blast it is to play; in fact, a lot of you probably already do to some degree. This book is designed for everybody, from complete beginner to “beginning to be complete” as a player.
Contents: The “Right Hand” • The Pentatonic Minor • Pentatonic Major • Articulation • Arpeggios • Pentatonic Major, part 2 • Pentatonic Minor, part 2 •Major & Minor Scales
About the Author
Paul Jared Newman hails from Greenwich Village, New York and has been involved with the guitar since the late 60’s. Forming his first group, “The Lower Class”, at age 13, their first engagement was at the now legendary Judson Poet’s Theatre, in The Love Cure, one of the first Rock musicals produced in New York.
The early work of the Rolling Stones, Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton inspired Jared to explore the Blues records of John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Muddy Waters and others greats, leading to nights spent painstakingly trying to copy their guitar playing, and days falling asleep at school. An infatuation with classical music and Spanish guitar began soon after, and he has remained a musical eclectic ever since.
The day after graduating UC Berkeley in music, Jared took off for Europe and hooked up with a band from Antwerp, Belgium, with whom he toured for almost two years. The call of his hometown was strong, however, and he returned to the “Big Apple” to embark on a multifaceted career as musician, classical and pop music editor, publisher and songwriter.
In the 80’s Jared formed the Art Rock band “Not Heaven”, playing the New York club circuit. He taught guitar and music theory at the American Institute of Guitar in Manhattan for several years and started AIG Publications, concentrating on classical and flamenco guitar editions including the bestselling Keys to Flamenco Guitar series by Dennis Koster.
As an author, Jared’s published work includes the Teach Yourself series of guitar books and Classics for the Guitar in Tablature, all available wherever Santorella Publications are sold. His arrangements Five Women Composers for Guitar and Ernesto Nazareth: Brazilian Tangos are published by MelBay.
Jared holds an MM in Guitar Performance from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and continues to play, teach and write about his favorite styles of guitar playing.
