Hal Leonard Taylor Swift

Excellent product for an excellent price

This review is for Taylor Swift Guitar Recorded Versions. This book consists of actual transcriptions of the recordings on her 1st album. It has all of the guitar parts including full intros, outros, and solos, written out in tab and notation, with rhythm slashes that indicate the exact strumming used, and the singer's part (the melody) in notation but not tab. If you want to see exactly how the guitars were played on the recordings then the transcriptions are the ticket. However transcriptions can be quite complex to understand and I would only recommend them for the advancing intermediate player, not for beginners at all.Amazon sells songbooks in various formats (but not all of the books are available in all formats) and it is important to understand the differences between them to get the right book for your purpose.Guitar Chord Songbook. This is the most basic and is just words and chords, similar to what you can download from the internet, except that the chords are usually correct and in the right places. It is the least confusing format but also has the least amount of information. This can be a great choice for an absolute beginner.Piano/Vocal/Guitar. This format gives the chords and words, and a piano (sheet music) arrangement. Can be used by a guitar player but not recommended because the piano arrangements add unnecessary pages. This format is the obvious choice for a piano player.Easy Guitar with Notes & Tab. This format has the words and chords, and the singer's part (the melody) written out in both guitar tab and in standard notation. Some of the guitar parts are also written out in tab and notation. These are mainly the intro's with some snippets of other parts that have been slightly simplified to make them easier to play. In the back of the books is a page of basic guitar strums. Each song suggests which strum pattern is suitable to use with the song, but the suggested strum patterns rarely match the exact strumming on the actual recordings. These books have many more pages than the basic chord books so there is a lot of page turning involved. The songs in "Speak Now" are each about 6 pages long. I don't think the average guitar player wants to have the singer's part completely written out as they are in this format, but these books can be a good choice for the advancing beginning guitarist who wants to learn some basic solo parts or who is learning to read standard notation.Guitar Recorded Versions. This format includes chords and words, and all guitar parts written out in guitar tab and notation. The singer's part (melody) is only in notation, not tab. This format gives the most information but is hardest to understand because of the density of the information. For example in "Taylor Swift Guitar Recorded Versions" the song Tim McGraw is 11 pages long and contains 3 different guitar parts. This is the only format that shows the strumming parts as they are actually played, in the form of strumming slashes, but it lacks accents marks which would have been helpful. Definitely not for the beginner but this format can be a good choice for the advancing intermediate guitarist.All of these books fall short in showing how to strum Taylor's songs. Her songs are great material to learn guitar on because of her simple chord progressions, but she often uses complicated 16th note rhythms that are hard for beginners to understand because beginners first learn simpler 8th note strumming. Even the Guitar Recorded Versions is not completely helpful because it fails to show how she accents her strumming. Some transcription books do show accenting, but the lack of it here is not big enough to warrant deducting a star from my rating.

money well spent and really love this book! I've just received it so, haven't really played it yet but I can say it's playable and in an easy format. Perfect both for piano and guitar. Songs in full-length unlike some music books where they have only first verse with chorus. Waiting for other taylor's song books as well :)

Excellent album and PVG

This is a great book. I got it for my daughter to learn on piano and guitar. She was thrilled and it is exactly what she wanted. Good arrangements, not for beginner piano. Easy guitar and intermediate piano level.