Join Joe McMurray as he thoroughly reviews guitar books - method, technique, song and repertoire. There are hundreds of books on the market, and Joe will help you to find the best book that explores your area/style of interest at the proper level of difficulty.
Joe is a professional player and teacher with a formal background in jazz guitar, but extensive experience with folk, rock, blues, funk, and classical styles on instruments including the guitar, ukulele, piano, bass, banjo, and drums. He has released two solo fingerstyle guitar and ukulele albums, played on numerous rock recordings, and written his own book on arranging for fingerstyle guitar.
All content for Guitar Books the Podcast is the property of Joe McMurray and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Join Joe McMurray as he thoroughly reviews guitar books - method, technique, song and repertoire. There are hundreds of books on the market, and Joe will help you to find the best book that explores your area/style of interest at the proper level of difficulty.
Joe is a professional player and teacher with a formal background in jazz guitar, but extensive experience with folk, rock, blues, funk, and classical styles on instruments including the guitar, ukulele, piano, bass, banjo, and drums. He has released two solo fingerstyle guitar and ukulele albums, played on numerous rock recordings, and written his own book on arranging for fingerstyle guitar.
Is this one of the best or worst method books for learning to play acoustic fingerstyle blues guitar?
You can learn to play music using a variety of resources including teachers, online resources, and books.
Open with 12-bar blues performance
Imagine ripping a blues solo on stage with your band – your drummer and bassist providing a comfortable soundscape on which your tasty guitar lines can float.
Now imagine that you’re alone on your front porch with only an acoustic guitar – wouldn’t you like to be able to jam on the blues all by yourself?
There is a long tradition of fingerstyle blues
Although much fingerstyle blues music is mixed with vocals, solo instrumental tunes can be so much fun!
Welcome to Guitar Books the Podcast, my name is Joe McMurray
Show books
Unusual episode – I’m going to do a rundown my own recently published books, Fingerstyle Blues Guitar: An In-Depth Study of the 12-Bar Blues in the Key of E Major: Books 1 and 2
First priority of these books is to quickly get you playing a solo instrumental 12-bar blues, 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 following chapter will add icing on the 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.
Not here to teach you every authentic Robert Johnson lick or every subgenre of fingerstyle blues.
You won’t learn and memorize a bunch of new tunes.
However, I will clearly lay out how to create a solo fingerstyle guitar performance in which you improvise over the 12-bar blues structure using a monotonic bassline.
You will master ONE platform through which you can channel endless creativity and put on a satisfying blues performance.
Lots of fingerstyle blues books on the market – why work through mine?
I love many of these other books, and I have learned a lot from them.
The first thing that differentiates mine is its focus on playing the blues over a monotonic bassline.
Most other books focus on playing the blues over an alternating bassline (Travis style) (although they may present some material on using a monotonic ...
Guitar Books the Podcast
Join Joe McMurray as he thoroughly reviews guitar books - method, technique, song and repertoire. There are hundreds of books on the market, and Joe will help you to find the best book that explores your area/style of interest at the proper level of difficulty.
Joe is a professional player and teacher with a formal background in jazz guitar, but extensive experience with folk, rock, blues, funk, and classical styles on instruments including the guitar, ukulele, piano, bass, banjo, and drums. He has released two solo fingerstyle guitar and ukulele albums, played on numerous rock recordings, and written his own book on arranging for fingerstyle guitar.
