Guitar Books Comparison #3: Best Fingerstyle Blues Repertoire Books скачать в хорошем качестве

Guitar Books Comparison #3: Best Fingerstyle Blues Repertoire Books

Looking to learn new fingerstyle blues tunes to play on your acoustic guitar? This is a rundown of my favorite fingerstyle blues repertoire books. Hopefully you have already seen my previous video of “Best Fingerstyle Blues Method Books.” Method books provide a guided course of study with explanatory text, exercises, example tune arrangements, etc. In this video I will be talking about my favorite fingerstyle blues repertoire books, which simply provide tune arrangements and possibly some background info for each tune. I’ve been through many, many books, and I have been teaching and performing professionally for over a decade, so hopefully my insights can help guide you to the book that is best for you! Be aware that all of these repertoire books provide standard notation and tablature, and most of them do NOT provide any picking or fretting hand fingering. Working out optimal fingering is extremely important when learning an arrangement – good fingering choices make playing easier & minimize the potential for mistakes. Best Repertoire Books: 1) The Complete Acoustic Blues Guitar Method (Mann, 2014) Rep book that presents lots of tunes from across the many subgenres of FS blues. These are solid arrangements that occasionally provide multiple choruses to show variations- this is extremely valuable for extending short tunes into performance length pieces. It is also worth analyzing the author’s variations so that you can learn to create your own! Late beginner to advanced, but majority of the tunes are of an intermediate difficulty. I really like the organization of the book: tunes are organized by subgenre, and within each section the tunes are arranged from easiest to hardest. Each tune comes with nice historical background info and listening recommendations. 2) 12-Bar Fingerstyle Blues (Rubin, 2012) Rep book. Mostly intermediate. More repetitive grooves than some of the other FS blues books on the market. Fewer lyrical phrases in the melodies. I like that the tunes organized by subgenre, but the difficulty jumps around from tune to tune. For experienced players, this is a fast book to work through. Because each tune is a 12-bar chorus, you will get a lot of ideas that you can digest, combine, and make your own in the future. Next, I want to introduce a special book that doesn’t quite fit into the simple “Repertoire Book” category: 3) The New Art of Ragtime Guitar (Saslow, 2011, 2017 2nd Ed.) This book is essentially a rep book of ragtime blues tunes, but the analysis that accompanies each tune is extensive and extremely valuable. Late beginner to advanced and difficulty progresses with each tune. These tunes are really fun, & you will gain valuable insight from the analysis. The author coaches you through fingering choices, his use of guide, anchor, or pivot fingers, etc. These lessons will make you a better player. 4) Fingerstyle Blues Songbook (James, 2005) Another rep book with good arrangements & historical background info. Honestly, it’s not all that much different from Woody Mann’s The Complete Acoustic Blues Guitar Method, but this book is much shorter. Late-beginner to intermediate, although advanced players will certainly enjoy the tunes as well. 5) Complete Country Blues Guitar Book (Grossman, 1992) Rep book. Good arrangements. Lots of authentic tunes. Stefan Grossman is an incredible musicologist who helped rediscover and promote much of the old fingerstyle blues music of the 1920s and 30s. I really like the interviews and historical information that he has included making this a great coffee table book. Late-beginner to intermediate. Tunes organized by subgenre. Strange TAB. *6) Solo Blues Guitar (Rubin, 2006) Rep – I’m putting this book at the end because it is NOT a fingerstyle blues guitar book. The examples can be played FS, but most seem to work best with a plectrum/pick/flatpick. However, I want to include this book for a couple reasons: 1) It is focused on solo blues guitar arrangements 2) I LOVE this book. These examples are fun and they inspire me to improvise in new ways with new grooves. Like Rubin’s 12-Bar Fingerstyle Blues, these tunes also feature repetitive grooves alternating with melodic lines and licks, rather than choruses focused on lyrical melodies. My own books: Fingerstyle Blues Guitar: An In-Depth Study of the 12-Bar Blues in E Major – Books 1 and 2 are available in paperback or eBook through Amazon [https://a.co/d/g7Udsso (Book 1) and https://a.co/d/aDbh4H0 (Book 2)]. The first priority of these books is to quickly get you playing a solo instrumental 12-bar blues, & then to build on it until you can freely improvise or “jam.” Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar: go to http://joemcmurray.com/checkout/ to purchase a pdf of my eBook. Arranging for Fingerstyle Ukulele, will be published by Mel Bay in 2026. My music is available on all streaming platforms at https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dcok...