Reddit reviews Matteo Carcassi - 25 Melodic and Progressive Studies, Op. 60: Book/Online Audio

My personnal recommandations (which is what I work with currently):

• For sight reading this and that.
  
• Etudes: Sor and Cassini
  
• Methods : Pumping Nylon and Kitharologus

Definitely! My instructor made me get Pumping Nylon primarily to build my classical guitar playing chops. It's what weight training does for muscles, but for your hands...if that makes any sense. With a pretty strict practice routine, I saw considerable improvement pretty fast.

Also, the songs in there may or may not be enough, so may suggest a copy of this? They're just studies to improve your right hand, but are relatively easy to learn and fun to play. My copy's older so it looks different, but that should be the right one.

But back to Pumping Nylon. It's all pretty basic, especially if theory's not an issue, but some of the exercises will frustrate the hell out of you. If they don't, you're either not doing it right, or you're already a decent player.

Also, (sorry to ramble) my personal favorite piece to learn and still play, would have to be Bach's Cello Suite No.1 for Guitar, transposed to C. This specific transposing was apparently better suited to a lot of the fingering, so I stuck with learning that one. But overall, it's just a wonderful piece of music.

Good luck with the practice and have fun!

If you know how to ready sheet music, you could check out this book by Carcassi. What it starts off with isn't too difficult either, it starts with some pieces that are constructed off of some basic scale patterns, and moves on from there. I would also pick up this Segovia scale book and 20 Studies for Guitar.

Edit: And I highly recommend signing up for lessons. Classical guitar is much, much, more difficult and a lot more tedious than electric guitar.

http://www.amazon.com/Matteo-Carcassi-Melodic-Progressive-Studies/dp/0793518679/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405454838&sr=1-4&keywords=carcassi+etudes

these are the carcassi etudes. I've had a musical background on the trombone for years and I've played guitar for about 2 before my teacher put me onto classical. I already knew how to read music, and he taught me the technique behind the etudes. SO, I guess I'm saying I started CG knowing how to read music already, with a certain level of aptitude to applying it to the guitar. I didn't start off with any method books, but I eventually bought a bunch and saw that my teacher pretty much taught me all of it to begin with, apart from the flamenco stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/Solos-Classical-Guitar-Worlds-Favorite/dp/B002V4SIX4/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1405454901&sr=8-3&keywords=classical+guitar+favorite

This is a compilation of beginner to intermediate guitar etudes and short pieces. Also you will find some arrangements of songs that were not written for the guitar, but someone did good work and made it so. If you get bored of the carcassi, try some of these to take your mind off it and to practice your sight reading, but always go back.

With Pumping Nylon inbetween. There are a few things you're going to have to learn that come with basic general guitar playing. Chord forms, triad forms, rest strokes, note reading, (maybe some Italian lol) also, grab a musical dictionary for the Italian stuff.... If your piece says to play Andante, you don't want to play it Allegro. If your piece says to play staccato, you don't want to play legato. If it says Dolce, don't play it Pesante.

There are so many things you learn with time and practice, but learn to play the carcassi etudes, MIND YOUR FINGERINGS. Good luck!


One last thing, STAY ON ONE ETUDE BEFORE YOU MOVE ON. Perfect it, you don't want to be able to play 10 half-ass etudes... that defeats the purpose. Get them down pat as you move along.