Description

You can learn to play music using a variety of resources including teachers, online resources, and books.

Mel Bay’s Complete Chet Atkins Guitar Method is an excellent method book aimed at beginner and intermediate guitar players who want to learn to play solo fingerstyle guitar arrangements in the style of Chet Atkins (the majority of which utilize an alternating bass/ Travis Style).  If you are interested in this country-blues style of playing that Chet Atkins made popular starting in the 1950s and lasting until his death in 2001, this is a great place to start.  This book ranges in difficulty from easy to intermediate, although a few of the final arrangements are fairly difficult.

1. Starts with the very basics of music and playing the guitar, but focused on fingerstyle and fairly quickly gets you playing music with both melody and bass parts.
2. Excellent and thorough look at playing solo fingerstyle arrangements utilizing alternate bass patterns.  Goes through one key signature at a time and covers all the normal guitar-friendly keys (C, Am, G, Em, F, Dm, D, Bm, A, F#m, E).
3. Very accessible tunes that you can learn and perform.  Many of these tunes are old folks songs – you won’t find any arrangements of popular modern music.
4. Useful picking exercises to develop technique.
5. Several classical-esque tunes that are refreshing after lots of alternate bass.
6. All standard tuning until the final arrangements (a couple are in alternate tunings).
7. This book does not get into the modern percussive techniques used by modern players like Michael Hedges, Don Ross, Andy McKee, Mike Dawes, etc. No thumb or string slaps, guitar body percussion, or tapping.
8. Audio Access included.

This is not a bad first fingerstyle guitar book to purchase and work through.  Obviously working with a teacher will streamline your development and prevent you from developing bad habits.  If you make it through this book, you’ll have a great foundation for playing fingerstyle guitar.  You’ll also learn some useable and fun arrangements of old tunes.

I recommend using an acoustic steel string guitar rather than a classical guitar since there are multiple tunes that utilize the fretting hand thumb over the top.

Published by Mel Bay, written by Chet Atkins.  © 1993

My eBook: Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar: go to https://joemcmurray.com/index.php/merch/ to purchase a pdf of my eBook.

Riding the Wave: my second fingerstyle guitar album is available on all streaming platforms.