I Won!!

 I'll never know how much of a sap I was for upping my bid a whole 5 dollars with under an hour to go in the e-bay auction for the guitar method books.

Some other dude upped my original bid by 50 cents.

This I surpassed by $1.25, or the cost of a street car, before adding the 5 bucks to it in the closing minutes, in case whomever it was was going to try to pull the rug out from under me.

The seller only has a 50% positive rating, but seems to have learned from the negative review and now ships his books in a more protective package. I wouldn't care if they were bent a little, myself.

I did get to check out Bruce Forman, and he is a "form"idable guitarist who blends chords and melody notes in equal parts.
The tutorial video I saw of him would have him explain something and then give an example, but then he would say, or you could try something like this, and would go on to play 3 or 4 variations, and I would get the sense that he was trying to say that you can just play anything; whatever you hear; so I am interested in The Jazz Guitarist's Handbook.

The Progressive Lead Guitar, who knows what that will be about. It probably depends upon whom the author defines as being a progressive guitarist, out there. At least I hope they have transcribed some progressive solos.

John Renbourn, I have heard of, but can't say I have him anywhere in my 1,100 hours of music...

The Johnny Smith book, I actually had, when I was 15 or so.

That was the age at which I would be snapping up all the books that my "unburdened by the cost of living because I was living with my parents" paychecks from bagging groceries could go towards.

The approach that Johnny took towards music was to learn to read guitar music written in the actual pitches and not transposed an octave so as to fit entirely on the treble clef; or the staff with the "G" clef, as opposed to the "F" clef used by the bass instruments.

And, along these lines, Johnny presented chords and things using the 2 staffs that piano players read. His idea was that it would place the guitarists lower notes into the correct perspective of being bass notes; and he would be able to think more like a pianist, or an arranger of classical music scores.

I guess Johnny would then teach that, by thinking of the instrument this way, you can compose more comprehensively. I don't know, I never got past trying to read one or two notes on the bass clef, and the rest of the notes of the chord a whole staff above. It made even the simple C chord look weird. But I guess it could help you think of an Am7 chord as just being a C chord with an A note in the bass...

Creative Folk Guitar #1 might wind up being the most useful book of them all.

Maybe just to give me some strumming chords to take my mind off notes on the bass clef.

Charlie Byrd, another guy I have heard of, but, it is a melodic method.
It should be interesting; maybe a practice system or some kind of ear training exercises, to get you sounding like the Byrd Man, himself...

The flatpicking book was the one that I went to e-bay to look for, in the first place.

I had Googled the Mel Bay flat picking method and wound up seeing this fantastic offer of 11 books in "acceptable" condition.
I would have paid the whole 6 bucks that was the initial bid for just the flat picking one.
I want some mind numbing, meditative type stuff that thrives on repetition.

Building right hand technique is what I have been focusing on the last year; having experimented with how to hold the pick, etc.

Wish me luck. I will do my best!!