Customer Reviews

Blues Acoustic Guitar Method (Progressive)

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

 

 

I love the Progressive guitar books. They get you into music making right away. No wasted time. The examples and lessons are easy to grasp, and the CD's let you hear what you're tying to accomplish. Academic music theory is taught secondarily. This book takes you right into that great blues sound. By the time I got 3/4 through the book, I couldn't believe what I could play. I love to listen to the CD just for musical enjoyment.

I have read some criticism of this book that it is too basic. I think that's wrong on two counts. First, if you go all the way through the book, you'll learn a lot of chops. Maybe not terribly advanced chops, but you'll be able to play some really cool-sounding stuff, and you'll have enough knowledge to be able to improvise and start expanding on what you've learned. Second, I can't tell you how many "Beginner Blues" books I've bought that were way, way beyond what the beginning student could play. Even this book would be a serious challenge for someone who is just learning to play guitar; but it would be a challenge, not a frustrating, tantalizing impossibility. I've been playing for over four years now, and I've learned quite a bit of acoustic blues, including stuff that is a lot more difficult than anything you'll see here. Nevertheless, I picked up several nifty tricks from this book. In fact, I pulled it out just this weekend and tried out some things I hadn't gotten to yet (I've now gone through the entire book at least once). I've already built one 12-bar example into a fairly cool little song. The book was easily worth the price I paid. I have three books from this Progressive series; they have all been good. If I have a complaint, it's that only one thing in the book, a fingerpicking solo, goes beyond a single 12-bar. Sure, it's good to learn 12-bar chops, and then start improvising on them. But a few examples of complete songs, with some simple solos and fills and runs, would have been nice. I'm experienced enough to be able to create this stuff myself; less advanced players will probably feel like they've been left a little short. But look at the price! Is it worth such a small amount to be able to learn some cool sounding blues? I say yes.

I am very disapointed by this book, I sent it back to Amazon for refund 10 minutes after having opened the book. The content is poor, it mainly deals with techniques like hammer-on, slide, shuffle,I-IV-V etc. All this information can be freely accessed from the Net. There is nothing about what the blues really is and how it works (the first chapter dealing with the blues scale is...the appendix, can you believe that?). All examples are with open string chords, you want go farther than the 5th fret, which is IMHO a very bad approach. All in all the book may be worth the money only if you never ever played guitar and want to start with the blues.

This book was excellent. I am an advanced player and was playing blues in no time at all. It will take a beginner a little more work but it will be well worth it. I have also purchased other books by Koala publications and found them to be excellent. Having the cd to listen to is what makes this book so good.

I have had this for a few weeks and was hoping to use it in addition to my regular lessons. Have been learning for about 2 months now so this is from the point of view of a beginner. Here are my thoughts:

- not sure I like the structure. I think the shuffle stuff is the easiest but it starts at lesson 3. The first lessons are open chord strummers but it's very hard to hear what it should sound like since these tracks are a full band (which admittedly sounds good) making it hard for a beginner to pick out what they need to hear. And why start the second of these exercises (8) with the dreaded F chord?
- these early lessons don't include tab just A6, D6 etc but the tab comes in later. Would be nice if it was all the way through given there is an empty staff doing nothing in lessons 1-3. Basically i just want to llok in 1 place and see what i need to play.
- some of the chord boxes are weird eg A on page 7 shows the 6th string is played, is this normal or something they have added? Same with Am on p.12.
- the Lead lesson (4) starts off well and uses the basic e-scale and has some easy exercises to begin. Here it is actually easier to hear what you need to play since it is just 1 guitar. It was easy to master and sounds quite bluesy. The first combined shuffle/lead exercise (34) includes a closed (B-B6) bar which involves a massive piny stretch to the 6th fret which is currently impossible....wtf! A later exercise (42) has a more simple shuffle although I appreciate this is in A and not E.
- the CD is giving my mac grief. I am tying to burn it but only managed to get halfway through the track before it started grinding and not doing much requiring a force quit. Also the CD is not registered on the net (unlike some Dummies ones) so you get no album information (hint in itunes right click on the cd and click get info)

Anyway that is about as far as I have got. Hopefully this will get easier with time but thus far I am not a huge fan.