Teaching a child to play the guitar presents a different challenge for any guitar teacher. Often times, a guitar teacher will have to come up with some kind of method that suits his young student. A good guitar method book specially designed for children will certainly be of great help in this situation, and one book in particular is “Alfred’s children’s guitar course”Let’s see what this book offers.

The 140-page book is intended for children up to five years old and has colorful pages that can certainly catch a child’s attention. After a few pages of basics like; “Anatomy of the Guitar”, “Holding the Guitar” and introduction to “Basic Musical Symbols”, students are presented with an “Activity” page where they will be asked to draw the musical symbols learned earlier, as well as the basics to count the “Beats”. Unlike most of the traditional guitar method books that I used to see, the book does not begin with the ‘Reading Notes’ lesson, but rather with a ‘Strumming’ lesson. An interesting approach from the writers of the book is the introduction of three colorful characters: a dog, a cat and a friendly crocodile who are always around to give advice to the student in each lesson.

Reading the music notation doesn’t begin until page 37 of the book, and by then, the students had already learned four chords in the single position and had practiced strumming them in the songs they were given. Starting on page 37, you return to the traditional approach of learning to read notes on each string from the 1st. Activity pages keep popping up between lessons and the colorful characters are always there to help. Students will experience the combination of individual notes and chord strumming on page 43 and this will continue with each new note learned.

A “Four Strings” version of the previously learned chords is presented on page 79 and this continues with the introduction of the “Bass-Chord” accompaniment style, as well as playing with “Dynamics” to train students to add “Feel “to your interpretation. .

Pro:

The book’s approach of introducing the “strum” lesson first before reading the “notes” is certainly a good way to keep the lesson entertaining for children. It is much easier than trying to memorize notes and find them on the guitar before they can play a meaningful sound. The accompanying CDs sound great and are actually “enhanced” CDs that have additional features when played on a computer. The colorful cartoon characters did their job of making the lessons interesting and the colorful pages make the book look lighthearted and this is sure to catch the attention of young students.

Cons:

The book, although titled “Complete” on the cover, is not exactly a complete guitar methods book because even after finishing the book, students will only learn “four chords of chords” at best. Although they come with great sound and enhance CDs, the guidance of a guitar teacher is still needed to make the lessons most effective for children, especially five-year-olds.

Having reviewed the book and learned its pros and cons, I still feel that it is a good place to start for children who want to learn to play guitar because of its simplicity.