Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar

An outstanding introduction to this syle of music. The exercizes are very good and, with practice, provide an excellent foundation for further study.

This is a great book. I bought it a year ago after hearing good comments about it. I wanted to start playing some blues and learn how to fingerpick. This book takes you step and step, nice and slow. It even comes with a CD to help you hear what you're supposed to sound like. The CD goes fast, but of course you can take it at your own speed. The book ends with some great songs including one by Robert Johnson. After having gone through the book, I wouldn't say I'm now at expert at fingerpicking, but I no longer cringe at the thought of having to fingerpick. The book breaks down all the basic things you need to know and helps you work through it.

If you want to learn to play fingerstyle, this is a very good place to start. Everything but one chapter involves only the use of simple first position chords, so even if you are just beginning you can start with this book. It has a CD with examples of everything you learn in the book. TAB and notes. If I can learn to play with this book anybody can!

If you are new to fingerstyle guitar this is a good starting point. It begins with easy to understand exercises and examples of simple 12 bar blues, using both standard notation and tab. It then adds melody notes, syncopation and blue notes in easy stages. There are short descriptions and examples of fretting and picking hand techniques, playing chords higher up the fretboard and vamping, and finishes with some blues pieces using the techniques covered by the book. There is a c.d. included, containing all the exercises and musical pieces. This was one of the books that I found most useful when I started to learn fingerstyle guitar and although it is aimed at blues players, it is a good grounding for those wanting to go on to explore other styles of music.