Customer Reviews

Beyond Basics Fingerstyle Guitar (The Ultimate Beginner Series)

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Let me be clear; this book is very good, but I made a mistake. I read the reviews here and took it that the peices would be harder than they are. If you have basic finger separation and the ability to play two and three note thumb patterns you may easily be able to play, and remember, everything in this book in a bit over an hour. It is straight-forward.

I disagree with the people here that say the peices will make you sound better than you are. What you get with this book is peices that bring out the beauty of the *sound* of the guitar. Most people, including us guitarists, are just suckers for the open ringing you get so easily with a (decent) guitar and that is what these peices exploit. If you play these peices you will not sound like a pro (at least not to a musician, maybe to your grandma). You will, on the other hand, sound....lovely.

So, I recommend this book one hundred percent to a beginner who can play a few chords competently and wants to get into fingerstyle. But if you can play with you fingers a little already, look around for a slightly more advanced book.

This is the fourth book I have purchased by Mark Hanson. I also have the Travis Fingerpicking, Solo Fingerpicking, and Christmas Noel. This book gets into basic information real fast and will have you playing some "REAL GOOD STUFF" fast. I was able to play the first song in about an hour. The book has many difficult appearing chord names--BUT--most of the chords are two fingered and can be moved up an down the neck to make for some really great accompaniment. You will be playing all over the guitar--and sounding like a pro real fast. The book gets into more complicated material towards the end--but this book is not as complicated as the earlier mentioned books--so I would recommend this one first.

This book is superb. Hmm. Wait: it's flawless. I had heard that Hanson was a great teacher. Now I see why.

I've been playing about four years, I have a certain amount of ability, and I was able to start picking things up from this book right away. I was playing the first song in an hour or so. It uses all kinds of complex-sounding chords (Amin6, Dmin6, etc.), but Hanson ingeniuously uses very simple-to-play chords. As in, most of them require only one or two fingers!

I recently recorded myself playing one of the book's first songs and posted it to a message board of guitarists. Several people commented that it sounded "really complicated." Little do they know how easy it is to play! (They wanted me to post tabs--I gave them a link to come here and buy the book.)

The book's songs start at the fairly easy level, but by the end of the book, the material is extremely challenging. (Some high-speed ragtime.) If you're brand-new to the guitar, you'll struggle even with the first songs--but they would be learnable even by a novice. It will be a mighty struggle for me to learn the later songs in the book.

If you have any level of fingerpicking experience at all, you will jump into this book like a fish into a river. You will find excellent material to build your chops.

The book contains very little in the way of theory, but those two-finger chords I was telling you about are a great way for an advancing guitarist like me to sit and think about chords and the notes that go into them, and how to build them all over the neck. So you don't really get any theory about this book, but with a little dedication on your part, you can use it as a sort of launching platform. That's what I'm doing.

... It has vaulted straight into the "top 5 most valuable books" category for me--and I've bought a lot of guitar books.

...

This book is excellent. I found it by chance and decided to give it a shot. Whether your just learning fingerpicking, or youve been playing for a while, there are lessons to challenge any player in this book. Ive played guitar for 12 years, fingerpicking, but not TRAVIS picking. I first heard Travis picking in Dust in the Wind by Kansas. This book will teach you how to play like Lyndsey Buckingham in no time. the lessons in the beggining are easy and prepare you for the beautiful songs that you can learn in the end. People hear me play the songs from this book and think Im amazing. (secretly, it took me 2 weeks to master this book, practicing for 30-60 minutes a night)

If you want to learn to play classical guitar, then get this book, steal it, buy it, borrow it from a friend, just get it!

Wow! After playing various guitar styles for years and years, I decided to learn a little fingerstyle guitar and boy am I glad I picked up this book. While only 56 pages, the book includes a CD and some GREAT practice pieces to learn. Hanson lays out the material in a format that is simple enough for a beginner but also challenging enough for the intermediate to advanced player. Highly recommended.

I went a little crazy after inheriting a Guild guitar from a family member and purchased 10 guitar instruction books from Amazon. "Fingerstyle Guitar" is by far and away the best. It will teach you to turn simple chord progressions into beautiful and "artful" sound. Also, Marc Hanson encourages you add your own notes to personalize each song and give it your own style.
When I first received the book I listened to the entire CD and thought that it would take forever and involve a great deal of work to learn these songs. The instruction is so straightforward that you'll easily learn a song in a given evening. I hope Marc Hanson writes a follow up book with even more advanced techniques!

I decided to start playing acoustic guitar about 2 months ago after a 25 year hiatus. I didn't know exactly what I style I wanted to take on, so I purchased several books on different styles and flavors of music from power chords to classical. (As a side note my musical tastes range from Andres Segovia through Michael Hedges on to Tool, so go figure).

As a beginner I found this book to be very approachable with little formal guitar experience or training. Mark Hanson does a wonderful job arranging these pieces to make your guitar sound beautiful. The pieces start out easy and end up pretty difficult. Again I've only been playing again for a couple of months. I'm still trying to wrap my fingers around Taylor's Ferry and Brahm's Lullaby.

Last Sunday morning over coffee with my wife I played through the first three arrangements in the book; Canyon Cannon, Windows and Wheels, she remarked that they sounded wonderfully relaxing. Happy me!

I highly suggest using the CD with the book. I put the CD in my car and listened to it for days driving back and forth to work. It helped me feel the ebb and flow and swelling of the sound. After learning the fingering I was then able to incorporate what I heard on the CD to get rid of the rote stiffness and bring it to life.

An excellent book for a beginner like me and convinced me this is one style of guitar playing I want in my tool box.

Excellent book. Ihad been playing for about 2 years when i purchased this book and I love it. You'll quickly learn several different patterns of fingerpicking while learning to play in different styles of music. And as it is the with the guitar and this book, Its pretty easy to sound OK but pretty hard to sound great.

I've been playing for 14 months. During this time I have purchased many books and videos on learning to play guitar. But, when it came to learning fingerstyle, I got lucky in picking (no pun intended) Mr. Hanson's book on Travis Style guitar and have since "progressed" to his other books, including this one.

In the end, we're all self-taught, and Mr. Hanson's books helped me teach myself easier, faster, and better. You begin by learning simple patterns then applying the patterns in practice routines that combine left and right hand exercises (position changes). At your own pace, you move on in the book to more difficult and challenging patterns. Musical pieces are introduced and they evolve into more challenging pieces and melodies. As you practice and listen to the CD, you feel like someone is right there teaching and keeping you moving along.

If you're like me, when you first hear the CD you might not believe you can play the pieces. But, if you practice you'll be able to play them well and in a relatively short period of time. How much time it takes depends on your own abilities and willingness to practice correctly and of course practice frequency. It takes me a long time to master new material as my fingers don't cooperate as well as I'd like them to. But, I've found Hanson's book and CD combinations to be thoughtfully layed out, well written and worth the price.

His web site is very supportive. The author and staff respond to emails and provide excellent support via newsletters and quick responses.

I've owned this book for over a year and it really helped me out of some ruts I was bogged down in with my playing. Listening to the CD as soon as I got the book, I thought "Great, this is going to be way over my head," but within about an hour, I was playing the piece I had just listened to. By the way, why did it take me so long to start using my DVD player for instructional CDs? I can use the remote from my playing chair, and I can easily see which track I'm on from across the room .

This book might not be challenging enough for guitarists who consider themselves experienced fingerpickers, but for hacks like me who are trying to throw some variety into their playing, it's a great choice for the money. I own a lot of guitar instructional books and quite a few of them have CDs with them, but I've never found them terribly useful. After hearing Mark Hanson's materials recommended at three different acoustic guitar workshops, I decided to give this one a try. I've since ordered his Travis Picking and Solo Fingerstyle books and have been impressed with them as well.

If you're not already fingerpicking, this package will get you into it in a relatively painless manner, and you'll probably find yourself experimenting with songs you already know using new techniques. Cheers!