Customer Reviews

Beatles for Classical Guitar: Guitar Solo

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

 

 

This song book has excellent arrangements of Beatle classics for guitar replete with styles conducive to certain finger picking styles. Some of the songs require more of an advanced-level playing, such as "YEsterday" and "Norwegian Wood."

Good, clear explanations are included in this book. This is definitely a book for an intermediate to advanced guitarist. No doubt listeners will be just as delighted with the results of this book as players.

Fourteen of the arrangements in this book and in the Joe Washington book have been recorded by Michael Lucarelli, a classical guitarist living in Salt Lake City and are available on the web. Lucarelli recorded them exactly as written.

Unfortunately, Guitar's Forum, a little one-man company, got Larry Beekman to record his transcriptions and then took it out-of-print which ruins the opportunity for students to learn from the recordings. GF claims that it's temporarily out-of-stock, but it's been that way for the 2 years that I've been checking the website. Beekman should have gone with a reliable recording compny like Guitar Solo Publications.

Larry Beekman's Beatles for Classical Guitar is a must have collection for classical and finger style players who want to play the Beatles. The arrangements sparkle and have lots of rhythmic interest to keep the performer and listener totally engaged. I highly recommend it!

I agree with all the positive reviews here. These are beautiful arrangements, and the selection is unusual. Sure there's chestnuts like Yesterday, but there's even hard-to-find arrangements of Cry Baby Cry, I'm So Tired and Across The Universe. Finally this year (2005) Larry Beekman, the author, has released a CD of all 30 solos with Guitarist's Forum at gfmusic. It's so much easier to learn the tunes now. Enjoy!

The arrangements in the book are very good, this is one of the best beatles books i have for classical guitar, it would be better if it comes with a CD of all the pieces included in the book.

This book includes the greatest hits of The Beatles and the arrangements are great!

Although some of the songs are not so easy to play, for beginner to intermediate level guitar players I recommend The Beatles Book for Classical Guitar - Kids Edition

Larry Beekman has reviewed that book on his facebook: "Javier Marcó just sent me his new book of Beatles arrangements for kids. Even though the title says it is a "kids edition", the arrangements would actually be good for beginner guitarists of any age. Javier has managed the tricky task of keeping the arrangements simple (none of them go beyond 1st position) without sacrificing the basic melody and harmony of the tunes. There are 15 tunes, and the price ($9.90) is very reasonable. I recommend this book for beginning guitar playing/Beatles fan kids of all ages!"
[...]

I suppose there will always be selections we wish would have been arranged instead of others(after all this is the Beatles) but this seems far to heavy on the bubble-gum era. Those tunes just don't work very well as instrumentals. There are maybe a dozen or so really nice arrangements though. The Harrison songs are very easy and well done -- same for come together, across the Universe, and long and winding road. the 'In my life'
arrangements is horrible though - so if you mainly are after this song, look elsewhere. Nothing here challenging for an advanced classical guitarist -- and there is no tab. But for Christsakes, if you are a musician learn to read music -- it's not rocket science.

If you can read notation very well, this book is nice, because they are pleasant arrangements to listen to and play. However, the book does not come with tab, so may be difficult to use for many players.

When I ordered this book, I thought that it was tablature. When it got here, I found out that I was wrong. I can't read sheet music. This book sucks because I am stupid and ignorant.