Hal Leonard Classical Guitar Method Book 1 Instructional Paperback

There are NO mistakes and typos!!!

First let me comment on the numerous reviewers that are complaining about mistakes and typos. On page 19 the author explains that the numbers shown next to the notes are suggested left-hand fingerings. They are NOT FRET POSITIONS!!! Most of them coincidentally, are the same as the fret positions, but they shouldn't be used for that purpose! Use the the tablature for fret number positions. In the standard notation, do not use the numbers next to the notes for fret positions.

This is a very good beginner book for classical guitar. It starts you one string at a time and advances from there.

Notation looks good to me

I have found this book extremely helpful, and it gives a good overview of techniques along with exercises to put them in to practice. In another review someone complained about the little numbers next to the notes being "wrong." They thought the numbers indicated which fret the note should be played on, but the numbers are actually recommendations of which finger to use to fret the note, with 1 being index, 2 being middle, 3 being the ring finger, and 4 being the pinky. The only indication of which fret to play is the tab down underneath. So in the attached image you play the second note with your index finger on fret 1 of the high e string, and your pinky on fret 3 of the B string. This leaves your middle and ring fingers free to deal with the bass notes.

Riddled with mistakes and inaccuracies

I don't know how this book was published in this state; halfway through and I can hardly go a single exercise without there being a mistake in the notation. It needs a complete re-editing before it is in the state it should be.

The first image shows a piece where, throughout the entire thing, the "D" is labeled as being played on the 4th fret (4), when just earlier in the book it was clearly taught it is played on the 3rd fret. The second image is of the VERY NEXT EXERCISE in the book, where you can see the "B" is labeled as "2nd" fret in one measure and in the next measure, it is labeled as "1st". Even if you cannot read music, the fact that these two are the same but labeled differently is clear and will be confusing to anyone trying to learn.

Even if you know how to read music, these unnecessary notations are distracting and hard to ignore, and so they proceed to screw you up either way.

The actual pieces are fine, but the extra notation they included to help teach is so often wrong it is actually disruptive to the learning process. I would avoid buying this book.