Fingerstyle Guitar Lesson Book And CD Set - 103 Pages Paperback - 1 Audio CD
By its nature, a large part of the guitar playing we do sounds
best or better when it's accompanied by another instrument, a band, or at least some vocals (in the case of acoustic guitar). Whether we give it much thought or not,
we instinctively know this to be true. That's why it's so common for say a lead electric guitar player to look around for backing tracks so he has something to practice with. It just sounds better when the guitar has its place in a song among other instruments. Anyway, as a guitar player, no matter if your preference is Rock, Blues, Jazz, or anything else, it's also cool to have a repertoire of music that can sound great, even if it's just you and your guitar: no band, no backing track, nothing else but you and your guitar. But you're not always with a band, or backing tracks, at times, it's just you and your guitar and you want to play for someone and entertain them. If you're a great singer, you can get away with strumming chords and singing and that will sound great. Whether you're a good singer or not, another option you should look into and five a try is Fingerstyle guitar playing. By its nature of combining the bass/rhythm with a melody, fingerstyle has a way of sounding great all on its own. You can still sing to it, or have a band with you but you don't need to rely on them to have a complete and fantastic sounding sound and song. So this book gives you the opportunity to add a very valuable skill to your group of abilities. You never know when you'll be out somewhere and you'll want to entertain some friends with just you and your guitar.
Before diving in and giving your fingerstyle training and exercises to practice, the author spends some time at the start of the book to give you some introduction. According to the author's explanation this book doesn't really fall into the category of beginner book. Rather it's designed for the intermediate player, who has up to this point used a pick, and now wants to add fingerstyle to their skill set. There are some tips on how to select an acoustic guitar. All the different sizes and types of guitar are explained here. Acoustic guitar options that include the 12 string guitar, amplified acoustic guitars, and the cutaway type of acoustic guitars. They also cover the guitar construction methods and the types of wood used in the making of acoustic guitars.
Familiar Songs And Artists
The book uses familiar and popular songs to help you learn the techniques fingerstyle. Famous artists have their styles of fingerpicking explained and taught. Learn about artists like James Taylor, Robert Johnson, Paul Simon, the Beatles, and more.
Here's a quick look at some of the specific fingerstyle techniques you'll be learning about when you use this book and CD: you will learn Block chord style, where the right hand is sounding all of the strings of the chord at once -- similar to the way a piano sounds. Then there's a section that teaches about Travis Picking. This is an extremely popular technique that is named after the
Country guitar player Merle Travis. This style basically uses the thumb to play an alternating bass line while the other right hand fingers are playing the melody of the song. There's also a section on playing arpeggios. All the different ways of mixing up the order of the notes, bass and strings to vary the arpeggios is talked about.
Throughout all this teaching, you have a lot of very familiar songs (or song parts) that are used as practice examples for you to send home the picking styles you're learning. And the CD track numbers are always shown for easy reference to the audio examples on the CD. There's a section about using a capo. What a capo is and how it is of value to the guitar player who is doing fingerstyle. They also spend some time on alternate tunings. Other topics that are covered later in the book include counter melodies, Octave Transference, and harmony. At the back of the book you'll find 4 complete solo fingerstyle songs that you can learn and perform. These are complete guitar transcriptions of songs by accomplished fingerstyle players. Have fun learning and playing these songs as a way to showcase the skills you've learned from the book.
