Fingerstyle Guitar

Fingerstyle Guitar Reviews

More Picture

I'm writing partly to refute a review which said there are no markings to tell how fast or slow to play the songs. All of the material in this book is written both in tab and standard notation. The tab is the type of hybrid tab where the duration of notes is shown, eg a whole note has a square around it. Another complaint from the same reviewer is that it is not classical technique and advocates fretting the sixth string with your thumb. That comment is true for what it's worth; if you want classical technique get another book. The thumb around the back definitely makes much of this material easier to play, and this is good material. br /br /My own assessment is that this is a good teaching book for fingerstyle. Ken Perlman uses really good material (especially Mississippi John Hurt and Rev. Gary Davis songs) to introduce standard fingerstyle techniques. The songs and exercises are well graded and the book is very thorough. br /br /As far as the level goes, at the very beginning of the process of teaching myself fingerstyle, I found this book difficult to start with. I bought this book at the same time as I bought Mark Hanson's "Contemporary Travis Picking" and found Hanson's book easier at first, as it taught in smaller steps. Someone with more dexterity might not need the small steps, but I sure did. After a while I found Perlman's book accessible and I've enjoyed it since. br /br /One minor complaint I have that keeps me from giving it 5 stars is that it doesn't have a CD of the songs. Another small thing is that the arrangements of the songs are short and don't include the an intro, all verses, and lyrics. I know it's a method book not a songbook, but it left me wanting full arrangements of some songs.

Fingerstyle Guitar Feature

• 256 Pages
• Published by Centerstream Publications

Teaches beginning or advanced guitarists how to master the basic musical skills of fingerpicking techniques needed to play folk, blues, fiddle tunes or ragtime on guitar. Contents: All the Good Times * Along the Rocky Road to Dublin * Barrow Street Rag * The Beaumont Rag * Behind the Bush in the Garden * Campbell's Farewell to Red Gap * Candy Man * Candy Man Blues * The Cherokee Shuffle * Cranberry Highway * Cripple Creek * Eighth of January * The Entertainer * Fishing Blues * Freight Train * (There'll Be) a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight * Lark in the Morning * The Lazy Afternoon Blues * Little Sadie * The Liverpool Hornpipe * Lord Inchiquin * Louis Collins * Make Me a Pallet on the Floor * Man of Constant Sorrow * The Manchester Angel * The Mineola Rag * The Morning Blues * Pack up Your Sorrows * Paddy on the Railroad * Payday * Rain Don't Fall on Me No More * Shady Grove * The Sligo River Blues * Spike Driver Blues * Stealin', Stealin' * The Temptation Rag * The Trip to Sligo * Turkey in the Straw * The Year of Jubilo (Kingdom Coming).

Go tO Store Now !!

More Products

• Fingerstyle Guitar
• Advanced Fingerstyle Guitar
• Beyond Basics Fingerstyle Guitar (The Ultimate Beginner Series)
• The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking: How to Play the Alternating Bass Fingerpicking Style (Bk CD)
• Mississippi John Hurt (Book 2 CD's) (Stefan Grossman’s Early Masters of American Blues Guitar)

More Reviews

Great book for beginning fingerstyle - Michael S. Kerry - Columbia, MD USA
As said by other reviewers, this is a really good book with which to start out as a figerstyle player. A very large selection of (mostly) easily digestible chunks of tunes, covering all of the basic techniques and spanning a large array of styles (MJH and Rev Gary Davis country blues, Irish/Scottish folk, ragtime, etc.). The size of the songs make it easy to feel like you are accomplishing something and adding to your repertoire, but are challenging enough to keep you from being bored. br /br /The notes on the songs are interesting and the instructional bits for each tune are great; specific fingering suggestions and technique instruction is really helpful when learning the tunes.br /br /The ragtime stuff at the end is very challenging (although I will admit to not being a big fan of transcribed piano rags for guitar...just learn piano! There are lots of other more interesting guitar rags to be played), so even the intermediate player will have something to work on for quite some time. br /br /As others have said, a few downsides are the lack of a CD (having a teacher to help made a huge difference here; also, the songs are typically small enough that you could type them into something like GuitarPro with not too much effort and get some of the benefits of a CD) and some of the fingerings; Perlman's choice of the Neanderthal thumb technique (over the top of the neck) can be problematical for those of us with small hands, but in most cases I was able to get it, or change of fingering, which wasn't that hard. Again, having the teacher helps for this, but I think this is not a big issue overall. If you want to learn classical technique, this isn't the book for you anyway (get a classical book, and a good teacher)!


Nov 07, 2010 17:32:05