Customer Reviews

All Blues Soloing for Jazz Guitar: Scales, Licks, Concepts & Choruses

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"All Blues Soloing..." takes you step by step in an easy to understand, logical progression. The writing is clear and not abstruse. Each solo is an excellent example which makes the point of the written section but is also a beautiful, short musical piece which doesn't sound forced and is fun to play (which you can do along with the accompanying CD, very helpful for those who get the rhythms better by listening).

I have been using this and the Blues Comping Styles for Jazz Guitar at the reccommendation of my guitar teacher and have found both books to be informative and useful. I am relatively new to guitar playing and have learned some difficult techniques at a rapid pace. My compliments to the author.

I've looked at many books to improve my improvising skills. I learned more from this book than all of them put together.

Don't let the title fool you -- this book is an excellent learning guide for a wide range of guitarsits, not just jazz players. Blues, rock and even country players would beenfit from this book. Ferguson's narratives are short, clear and to the point. The solo pieces tie nicely with the narratives. Scales, modes, etc. are touched upon in an easily understood and useful manner.

As I have mentioned in my prior reviews, you often need to be at a certain level of playing for any given book, teacher or lesson to really take hold. I've become reasonably proficient at knowing most of my scales, including the harmonic and melodic minors, major and dominant bebop as well as arpeggios. What I have struggled with is aspects of phrasing. My instructor points out that while I'm still playing scales, I am able to make them sound pleasant, move through key centers and play through chord chart. This book, while focusing on the blues structure is an excellent tool for taking simple scale patterns and building reasonably hip lead passages with them. The author gives the scales of interest, backing tracks and a variety of examples of major scales, dorian, mixolydian and chromatic examples. This is proving to be a very helpful book for me (I've had it for a while but it hasn't caught fire until recently). Also is a set of licks that sound very good -- and in short one or two bar examples, which make them easily digestible and like I said, they sound hip enough that you do want to learn them. The book also starts out with some basic examples that sound great and it progresses from there -- but never seems to get too bogged down with complex theory or passages that are too difficult to play or understand. So I would suspect this could be a good book for players of many levels. I'm assuming that players with a basic undertanding of chords, scales and a reasonable level of playing dexterity would be able to make good use of this book.