Description

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 3^rd 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 bassline).
• One focuses on playing the blues over a monotonic bassline – Joseph Alexander’s Fingerstyle Blues Guitar.
  • I was honestly very influenced by this book, and I highly recommend it in addition to mine!
  • However, Alexander’s book focuses more on teaching you a bunch of authentic blues language and licks over the monotonic bassline, with less emphasis on putting together a full lyrical 12-bar solo, nonetheless a full multi-chorus performance.
  • My book starts from a more beginner-friendly place and builds with a much more gradual difficulty progression.  Easier melodies and rhythms at first, with many, many examples.
  • My book focuses on the bigger picture of putting together a cohesive blues chorus and then a cohesive multi-chorus performance.
• I have spent a lot of time working through other books, I have real world experience, and I’ve tried to create a series of books that will be most effective at teaching you to actually jam on the blues.

Critical of my own books:

• No recordings.  Need more time!  Two little kids. 
• Wordy?