Combustion instability is a major issue in design of gas turbine combustors for efficient operation with low emissions. Combustion instability is induced by the interaction of the unsteady heat release of the combustion process and the change in the acoustic pressure in the combustion chamber. In an effort to develop a technique to predict self-excited combustion instability of gas turbine combustors, a new stability analysis method based on the transfer matrix method is developed. The method views the combustion system as a one-dimensional acoustic system with a side branch and describes the heat source as the input to the system. This approach makes it possible to use not only the advantages of the transfer matrix method but also well established classic control theories. The approach is applied to a gas turbine combustion system, which shows the validity and effectiveness of the approach.