Pat Thrall 1973 Improvising Rock Guitar Vol. 1

This was the first book I studied way back in the early 80s, and I think it holds up well.

Me too - I remember Homage to Hendrix. Didn't sound like a Hendrix tune but the playing style was his.

I remember this well - a friend of mine had it in the '80s but Jimi was on the cover. Don't know if that was the reissue or the original. We had a band and I always wanted them to include Homage to Hendrix in the set list but they wouldn't because it was an 'exercise'. Wallies! It was a great tune!

The man's a genius!

Looking forward to read this book again. I had this book in the early 80s but stopped playing guitar a few years after. Now I'm thinking of buying a guitar again. Still have the book and vinyl somewhere but dont have a turntable anymore. Thanks alot for this

Wow. I cut my teeth on this as a kid in the 80s, thanks to Mr. Thrall I had a lot of good years on a solid foundation. Had to stop playing for about a decade, now I am returning and I'm disappointed that this incredible book is really impossible to find because I wanted to really start over from scratch. This book is very highly sought, you know. Mr. Thrall might want to Kindle it or re-release it and make some buckage? Please? Anyway, from what I've heard in rock for the last decade (and I'll get flamed for this) the world really needs this book, as rock guitar has mutated from a soulful expression of a person's innermost creative soul into an exercise in playing harmonic minor scales and arpeggios as fast you can in a 'ticky-ticky' like manner. When my kids want to learn to play, this is the book I want to hand them.

Thanks for posting this, though I have to think of 8 more things to say before I can see it I guess. Is the book here, the tunes, both?

Thought of a second comment. If I remember right, this book was covered with pictures from Mr. Thrall's studio where there was gear everywhere and the walls were covered with things like "home of the Les Paul." That also makes this book responsible for how my house looked for many years. Now only one room looks that way. Thanks for that influence too!

it seems i have a problem i had to make 10 posts but i still cannot download this book!so can the administrator help me please?
thank you in advance

This is a great little book. The edition I bought in 1974 had a photo of Jimi Hendrix on the cover. Thanks for posting this!

thanks

very good for guitarist

Any plans to re-release this book? It's getting a lot of chatter on the web. A fondly remembered chestnut. That's what brought me here.

Kinda embarrassed but this will be my 10th post and I can download the files. It does not mean I will be leaving here, I really like this site.

I had the one with Hendrix on the cover. It has been at least 30 years since I've seen it. Great find!

That book and record was really my first guitar teacher. I wonder how many guitarists Pat "taught" with that book. It was groundbreaking.

Thanks for sharing; it's a fresh look back when you think of how far guitar has advanced in many ways...The 70s is still my favorite era as those players inspired me to pick up and play, and I've done it my whole life...it's the one thing I never out grew or perhaps never grew old.

i never read the book - i was only 3 years old when it was first published and never could find the reprint.

I too had the Hendrix cover. I had sort of figured out pentatonic--the black keys thing, being in a musical household--one night trying to play along with 'Hide your Love' by the Stones, but this systematized it. Then learning to shift modes, and how E pentatonic became G major--some of that via Mick Taylor's solo on Sympathy for the Devil--Get your Ya Yas out. But this book made me a guitarist in many ways.

I also had the "Hendrix" cover version. This got me over a plateau in my playing, and allowed me to "decode" lots of music once I knew a few of these tricks.

This was the only book that actually showed you how to really play rock guitar. All of the "xxx complete" books (I had Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Beatles, maybe more) had half-arsed chords and were no help at all in playing like the record.

I loved jammin' to this back in '78...ah the good old days are new again with me digging this out of the boxed up archives!!!

I have the Hendrix version also and did not know until this forum that there was another release with a different cover...I'll have to try and find it as I'm sure there are a few still out there that are attainable.