Customer Reviews

Concepts: Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar (The Howard Morgen Fingerstyle Jazz Series)

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

 

 

Concepts is a must have for anyone interested in finally peeking "behind the curtain" to learn about solo guitar. Classical guitarists, jazz guitarists, rock and country players can finally learn what everyone wants to know how to do. The arrangements of tunes in this book are excellent exercises to demonstrate concepts like walking bass, chord substitution, reharmonization, and more. But also, they are "ready to go" arrangements you can learn and use at your next performance. Play one and you'll instantly look up and go "oh, that's how they do it!" Other books I've used were full of data, but left me still wondering how to apply the information. This book puts it all together.

I teach classical guitar but know very little about jazz guitar. In my constant quest to become a better overall guitarist, I bought this book to help me learn more about jazz guitar. I must say that it is loaded with very useful information, and has about 48 great songs to play in jazz style. I greatly appreciate that all songs are written in music notation, so if you cannot read music then this book may not be of much help to you since there is NO TAB. But, there are chord diagrams above the notation so that should help somewhat.

I have no serious complaints about this book at all. The reason I am only giving it 4 stars instead of 5 is because it desperately needs an accompanying CD. Although I am quite good at playing classical pieces, (mainly pieces which don't have a jazz rhythm), I am struggling to get the "feel" of the jazz beat. I don't come by it naturally and I really wish I could hear some of these songs played in a jazz style because I tend to revert back to straight rhythm. It has 2 pages of rhythmic practice which I can do very well, but something doesn't carry over well when I play the songs. It also has a lot of music theory information and guitar techniques (harmonics for example) which can only be good for a guitarist to understand. It has 188 pages of very useful information and several pages on alternative rhythms which I will check out in more detail.

If you can read guitar notation, and already have even a little jazz experience, then you should have few problems, if any, with this book, though it is challenging. I've had no jazz experience other than the hell I went through in my improvisation class in music school.

Also, and this has nothing to do with the book, but it took several weeks for my book to arrive.

This book delivers a mother load of high impact information that is useful immediately by showing you all of the chordal arrangement concept you will ever need to know! Also, this book will teach you how to assemble a chord melody arrangement starting with the first melody note to the last, step by step bar by bar presentation. By using the concepts found in this book, you will quickly begin creating stunning Joe Pass, Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum type substitutions and reharmonizations for any standard. Tab is included...

If you are new to chord melody playing but not a beginner guitarist, then I suggest you try Fred Sokolw book entitled, "Jazzing It Up: How to Improvise with Jazz Chords on Guitar". Those arrangements are great chop builder and a great intro into this subject matter. this book is also available on amazon..

As for this book, it is geared towards those players who want to create solo arrangements, not just play them. It assumes the player already has a history of playing in this style but lacks the how-to knowledge with creating them on a professional level.

cheers