Creative Guitar 1 – Guthrie Govan
Where do I start with this book? Oh, that’s easy. It is hands down the best guitar book I have ever bought in my life. Unfortunately statements like this are subjective. Everybody has different requirements and what works for one might not work for another, although I’m yet to hear of anybody that has had anything less than a great experience with this book. It’s certainly not for beginners but it’s also not particularly advanced and it’s basic theme is lead guitar, I think a quick excerpt from the back cover probably does it justice … “The Creative Guitar series aims to provide the frustrated rock guitarist with new directions in which to explore his art”.
So what’s in the book? … To some extent this does fall into the category of “if you’ve got one, you’ve got them all,” but this time with a difference. Although Guthrie feels the need to explain some of the basic stuff (despite it’s intended audience being intermediate to advanced) he does however do it justice and I’ve completely forgiven him for it 
This is the first guitar book I have ever read from front to back without even reaching for the guitar. There are quite a few tabs and scale examples covering the usual stuff from pentatonic to arpeggios to modes and some basic theory. The true value in this book is not so much in the examples (even though they are better than most) but in the text. If you get this book then read every word, it covers all the stuff that every guitarist should know and think about and the good news is Guthrie is obviously a very skilled writer. Not once did I feel the urge to skip a sentence, thank you Guthrie for making it such an easy and thoroughly enjoyable read.
The CD examples and jam tracks are quite possibly the best quality I’ve ever come across included with a guitar book and the solo examples are inspiring to say the least. Unfortunately the solo examples aren’t transcribed which is a shame for the lazy among us but that’s no excuse for not transcribing them yourself. If you’re at the intermediate to advanced level then you should be doing that anyway, there’s no better way to learn after all.
Creative Guitar 1 is not going to show you how to play basic chords and is aimed more at the intermediate level for lead guitar playing, mostly for rock and blues but could apply to most styles really. I’m going to go out on a limb and say if you are into lead guitar then just buy this book because even if some of the content isn’t for you, the eight or so jam tracks and solo examples alone are worth three times the cost of the book just for their sheer quality.
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