Couverture de Review #27: Roots and Blues Fingerstyle Guitar Explorations by Steve James

Review #27: Roots and Blues Fingerstyle Guitar Explorations by Steve James

Review #27: Roots and Blues Fingerstyle Guitar Explorations by Steve James

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 Is this one of the best or worst method or repertoire 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. Roots and Blues Fingerstyle Guitar Explorations by Steve James is a hybrid repertoire/method book for learning to play fingerstyle and bottleneck blues. This book is suitable for late beginner to advanced fingerstyle players but is best for intermediate players. I would definitely not recommend this book for complete beginners – it starts out too hard for inexperienced fingerstyle players. The book offers some technical advice as well as fun historical anecdotes and quotes. There are a bunch of fingerstyle blues books on the market, and I would generally not recommend this book over some of the others. On the positive side of things, this book excels in its material focused on open tunings and bottleneck slide. If you watch the included videos, you’ll see that the author is an incredible bottleneck slide player, and that is reflected in these chapters. On the other hand, I do not like multiple things about this book. The difficulty progression isn’t very smooth – the book starts out with some difficult (late beginner/intermediate) tunes, and then the difficulty varies from tune to tune. Part of this is because the open tuning arrangements (starting in the middle of the book) are a bit easier to play.There aren’t a lot of exercises. There are some, but this is more of a repertoire book with analysis and technical advice in the text.I’m not a fan of the way that Acoustic Guitar Magazine lays out their books. They don’t integrate their text and playing examples. Instead of text that prepares you for an example, then the example, then more text, then the next example, etc., they usually have the text in a big block, and that text will refer you to the examples which are together in another block. It requires more jumping back and forth for the reader. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not my favorite. Late-beginner fingerstyle players could utilize Roots and Blues Fingerstyle Guitar Explorations as a supplement to a traditional method book: A general fingerstyle method like Alfred’s “Beginning Fingerstyle Guitar,” orA more focused method like Bruce Emery’s “Travis-Style Guitar from Scratch.” Roots and Blues Fingerstyle Guitar Explorations provides both treble clef and tablature for each arrangement. Neither fretting nor picking hand fingering is provided in the music, but it is sometimes mentioned in the separate text. You can usually tell which notes should be played with your thumb by looking at the treble clef – bass notes generally have down stems. Regardless, the skill of choosing sensible fingering is important, and you will need to look elsewhere to further develop this skill. Videos demonstrating the examples are available online. These are great. For me, it was especially helpful while working through the bottleneck slide chapter. © 2014 by Steve James. Produced by String Letter Media in association with the Acoustic Guitar Magazine. My own books: Fingerstyle Blues Guitar: An In-Depth Study of the 12-Bar Blues in E Major – Books 1 and 2 are available in paperback or as an eBook through Amazon [https://a.co/d/g7Udsso (Book 1) and https://a.co/d/aDbh4H0 (Book 2)]. The 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 third chapter, and each following chapter will add icing on the cake. Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar: go to http://joemcmurray.com/checkout/ to purchase a pdf of my eBook. Learning to arrange melodies will also help your fingerstyle songwriting and your understanding of the inner workings of fingerstyle guitar. My upcoming book, Arranging for Fingerstyle Ukulele, will be published by Mel Bay in 2026. My music is available on all streaming platforms at https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dcokTG6C598OhTslHH5uo?si=hrQb7FViSZewDRSgECw9Ew: Pins on the Map: my third fingerstyle guitar album was released on January 19, 2024. Watch the first single, “Open Road,” on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/uPBh8sZQsT4?si=EM_wAwnHFqU1VC9C.Riding the Wave and Acoustic Oasis: my first two fingerstyle guitar albums.
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