Comparison #2: Best Fingerstyle Blues Method Books cover art

Comparison #2: Best Fingerstyle Blues Method Books

Comparison #2: Best Fingerstyle Blues Method Books

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 If you want to get started playing fingerstyle guitar, you will benefit from private lessons with a teacher, online video courses, listening to fingerstyle recordings, and of course… books. It is beneficial to mix and match all of these resources. Remember that everyone’s brain works differently, so you may gravitate more toward certain styles of learning / methods of presentation. I love learning from books because I can read the text at my own pace and as many times over as I want. Seeing the music written out is extremely helpful for me – I always had more difficulty keeping track of song forms or chord progressions without some sort of written reference. So, for those of you who want to utilize a fingerstyle blues book to beef up your chops, I’ve done my homework and I’ve distilled my favorites into this “greatest hits” list. I’ll try to be objective and describe who each book is best suited to. Additionally, I’ll separate things out and first tell you about my favorite method books and then my favorite repertoire books. Method Books Guided course of study with explanatory text, exercises, example tune arrangements, etc. Repertoire Books Tune arrangements and possibly some background info for each tune. Method Books ** Travis-Style Guitar From Scratch (Emery, 2006) My all-time favorite book for learning to play solo fingerstyle guitar with an alternating bass or “Travis-style”, which is used in much fingerstyle blues playing. Beginnner to intermediate. Lots and lots of exercises, smooth difficulty progression, repeated tunes at increasing difficulty levels, text with a sense of humor. * Fingerstyle Guitar From Scratch (Emery, 2003) Great for absolute beginner guitar players looking to step into the world of fingerstyle guitar. More focused on fingerstyle accompaniment or backup rather than solo fingerstyle guitar. Now on to my favorite method books that are focused on fingerstyle blues. 1) Acoustic Guitar Fingerstyle Method (Hamburger, 2007) Method book – could be the best initial book to work through if you’re just getting started with fingerstyle blues or fingerstyle in general. Effective organization of topics, progressive exercises, short but fun song arrangements at the end of each chapter. Primarily aimed at beginner to intermediate, but some of the final chapters are fairly difficult. Overall, this book provides a great overview of the techniques and approaches used in fingerstyle blues, giving you a solid foundation. After working through this book, you could move on to any of the other method or repertoire books that I’m about to introduce, where you can refine your skills and technique, learn to improvise, and learn more tunes. 2) Fingerstyle Blues Guitar: An In-Depth Study of the 12-Bar Blues in the Key of E Major: Books 1 & 2 It is without shame that I present my own books. These method books are focused on lyrical improvisation over monotonic bass. First priority of these books is to quickly get you playing a solo instrumental 12-bar blues in the key of E major, and then to build on it until you can freely improvise or jam.You should be up and running by the end of the 3rd chapter, and each subsequent chapter will add icing to your cake.Organized the books so that the concepts and exercises progress logically, thoroughly, and with a smooth difficulty progression. Take care to explain how to immediately apply each concept to your playing. These are essentially one long book split down the middle: Book 2 picks up right where Book 1 left off. It was just too long – it would have been around 350 pages.I recommend that everyone start with Book 1, which is suitable for all skill levels. Complete beginner players who work through the first few chapters should be able to improvise a satisfying fingerstyle blues solo. Intermediate to advanced players will breeze through the first few chapters, but will hopefully pick up some useful information starting around Chapter 4. Book 2 is more suitable for intermediate to advanced players. It digs deeper into higher level concepts that are more technically and theoretically difficult, but will elevate your playing to new levels. You will learn to play new scales, turnarounds, rhythms, time signatures, key signatures, and more! Again, I recommend that everyone start with Book 1, and then move on to Book 2. When comparing my books to other fingerstyle blues books on the market, most other books focus on playing the blues over an alternating or Travis-style bassline, although they may present some material on using a monotonic bassline.One other book, which, SPOILER, happens to be the next on my list, focuses on playing the blues over a monotonic bassline – Joseph Alexander’s Fingerstyle Blues Guitar. I was honestly very influenced by this book, and I highly recommend it in addition to mine! However, Alexander’s book focuses more on teaching you a bunch of authentic blues language and licks over ...
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