An Overview of "Fazio's Frets and Friends Complete Guitar Method"

-A seven level curriculum for guitar study designed to aid a student guitarist's progression from total beginner to advanced player-

By Brian Vaccaro

The Fazio's Frets & Friends Complete Guitar Method is the product of conversations between Drew Andrews (editor for Mel Bay Publications), Fazios' instructors, and me. These conversations revolved around the state of published guitar instruction methods. While we felt that many books addressed one or occasionally a handful of facets of guitar playing very well, we came to the conclusion that nobody had published a curriculum that gives student guitar players the tools to be successful within a full range of musical styles, settings, and approaches. This is the very basis of the Fazio's Complete Guitar Method.

As we began the process of putting the five book, seven level curriculum together, we were faced with the daunting task of compiling material from existing Mel Bay books. This is no small feat when you consider that Mel Bay Publications has thousands of titles to choose from in their catalog. More specifically, we had to decide which topics we wanted to cover within each level of the curriculum and then find specific pages within specific books that accomplished what we were looking for. We then cut and pasted these pages so that it followed the sequence of events we envisioned. In some cases, we didn't find a page or sequence of pages that did exactly what we wanted. In those cases, we had to create original material.

We determined that it was necessary to deal with musical styles ranging from Classical, Rock, and Jazz to Fingerstyle and Bluegrass while providing music theory knowledge, reading skills, and technique designed to help round out a student's overall musicianship.

Each level of the Fazio's Guitar Method deals with four skill categories: “rhythms”, “keys and chords”, “notes and positions”, and “technique”. As a student progresses through the levels of the curriculum, the skills attached teach of these categories naturally become more challenging. For example, the “rhythms” category in Level 1 deals with whole note, half note, and quarter note rhythms as well as 4/4 and ¾ meters. By the time a student gets to Level 5, he or she is tackling sixteenth notes and dotted sixteenth notes at faster tempos, reading 12/8 meter and higher levels of syncopation. In other words each level builds upon the last, challenging the student in each skill category without overwhelming him or her.

If a student successfully completes all seven levels of the Fazio's Frets & Friends Complete Guitar Method, he or she can be considered a very advanced guitarist accomplished in several different styles with a high level of fluency in music theory as applied to the guitar, standard notation reading, improvisational skills, and accompaniment ability. In short, all of the tools a modern guitarist needs to be successful.