Customer Reviews

Mel Bay Duck Baker's Fingerstyle Blues Guitar 101

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The title for this book is a little misleading - there is nothing "101" or basic about this book. But it does contain some terrific and challenging blues and blues based fingerstyle solos. Seriously, this will keep even an advanced guitarist busy for some time.

There is a very useful chapter on theory as it applies to fingerstyle blues guitar, and other discussions scattered throughout the book that accompany and explain the songs.

The performance cd is a joy to listen to. Baker is a terrific performer and arranger. His performances have a fire and a flow that make them exciting and beautiful.

Unlike some of the old Kicking Mule transcriptions, Baker's solos here are tabbed out here pretty much in their entirety, with variations and all. A lot of work went into this book.

Be aware that this book takes an expansive view of "blues" - that is, this isn't just a collection of 12-bar solos in different keys, just as Blind Blake didn't sit around playing 12 bar solos his entire career. All of the selections are very musical and cleverly developed to sustain interest. Many of the songs feature unusually clever interplay between the bass and melody lines that uses leading tones, counterpoint, etc, rather than just sticking with "boom-chuck" alternating bass.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in fingerstyle guitar.

I was disappointed in this book by Duck. I've several of his teaching videos which are real good, and I think maybe I was expecting something different from this work.
First of all, as mentioned, the title "Blues Guitar 101" seems to imply this is a basic work.
It's certainly anything but basic; many of the solos range in difficulty from medium to advanced levels.
Close to the beginning of the book there are eight full pages of what Duck refers to as "An Idiot's Guide to Theory" consisting of (1)an overly-complicated explanation of the construction of a basic major scale (2) naming the intervals: Tonic, Super-Tonic, Mediant etc. (3) Basic Chord construction (4) Cycle of Fifths and (5)How Upper Chord Intervals are determined.
When one later takes a look at the relative difficulty of the solos, one wonders why such basic theory is even included.....to mention nothing of the fact that the tie-in between the theory and the construction of the solos
is explained nowhere in the book and seems to be left to the reader's analysis.
There ARE 10 relatively good finger-style Blues solos included in the book; no question about it.
Nowhere is anything mentioned of the harmonic structure of the basic blues. Chord symbols are included in the music for only ONE (1) of the 10 solos. I guess it was meant to be an exercise to figure them out ourselves; kind of meaningless; it seems more like an oversight than an attempt at teaching.
No Minor Blues are included....a minor point; (pardon the pun).
A page or two is included as an introduction to each solo, consisting mainly of the left hand fingering mechanics of the more tricky chord forms used in the solo....again not really required considering the overall level of difficulty of the contents of this book.
I find Duck Baker a very likable, engaging and talented artist.
With all due respect, I do feel he tends to run on a little much in his teaching attempts; if he would stick a little closer to the "lesson plan" I think it would be more beneficial for those of us trying to learn from him.

I bought this book about a year ago. I am still working out tunes from this great book. I've learned nearly all of them, and I have to say that though I own a lot of great music books, few have kept my interest as this one has.
All the tunes are great, Ive learned so much and I feel that I am a much better player for it. Thanks Duck!

I bought this book to learn just one song. And the tab was inaccurate. Don't buy it