Customer Reviews

FINGERPICKING GUITAR FOR BEGINNER TO ADVANCED STUDENTS (Progressive)

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

 

 

Good book in that author exposes various styles to the new student. That is also the weakness of the book. Going from style to style with short lessons tends to confuse the student new to guitar fingerpicking.

This book is most suitable for those who would like to make your guitar sound more authentically in short period of time, especially on their own. Not so deep studies in particular style are made in this book that it covers various types of technques, intensely about arpeggios. Even for beginners, it is fairy possible to be able to play beautiful Greensleeves, depending on the effective use for the CD attached in the book. I recommend this book as one of the best self-teaching style book which I have ever seen.

I recently bought this book,having played guitar for some time mainly classical and decided to learn fingerstyle/fingerpicking patterns through chords.I did have experience with the progressive series books in the past and once again they came through with this one.The lessons are easy to learn and precise.It also contains large easy to read notes and diagram.It contains about a hundred forty pages or so of quality instructive lessons and excercises and includes a glossary at the end of the book.With this book and practice you'll be fingerpicking for years to come. Highly recommendable.

This book has helped me a lot. Excellent examples for a beginning fingerpicker.

This book is a decent introduction into standard fingerpicking but advanced players who want to get into fingerpicking should probably look elsewhere. There are maybe two - four pieces in the book which will take advanced players more then 20 minutes to basically master. I would of liked much more work on advanced alternative bass compositions so if you are looking for that than look elsewhere.

If you are brand new to the guitar then this is a great place to start as it will have you playing simple tunes right away. It will also teach you some basic things (like chords) which are used in other aspects besides just fingerpicking.

I teach guitar, and decided to look for a good book for beginners and intermediate guitar players.
The book and CD for fingerpicking guitar is a good progressive book for the serious guitar student.
I recommend this book for guitar enthusiasts, and guitar teachers. The CD tracks are perfect for listening to the examples, and deciding what metronome speed, should be used. A very good guitar book for learning and continuing to expand ones fingerpicking style.

I've had this book for several years now, and only recently picked it up again, and started working my way through it. It is a great book for those like me, who like to who are too lazy to pony up for real lessons, and learn well out of books. It nicely illustrates several different fingerstyle patterns as well as quite a few different chord progressions that sound great. There are also some excellent pieces to learn, specifically "Spanish Ballad", and "Andante", which have worked their way into my repetoire. My only complaints would be that it would be nice if it were in a spiral book form for easier use on a music stand, and it could go a little deeper into theory. It really just skims it very lightly, and if you don't know it already, you are just memorizing chord shapes and patterns. That aside, It's been at the front of my collection for many years, and I am still finding cool stuff to pick out of it.

As a guitar teacher, I found some bits of ideas here that would be good with students. This is not great for most people learning on their own (of course anyone will always do better with a teacher anyway...)

Here's the deal:
Chord ideas and fingerpicking patterns in the first part are very natural to the instrument and nice sounding with a good modern and attractive style. However, they are only short bits and not actual compositions or pieces at all.
Then there are folk melodies missing the lyrics with chord names just as you would find in a simple songbook, nothing added only the vague suggestion to apply ideas from the first section.
Then there are more intermediate level patterns that are otherwise similar to the first set.
Then there's Greensleeves over and over showing different arrangement ideas. To show the ideas, they did the arrangements very technically and they aren't as idiomatic to the guitar as they should be. The ideas are ok, certainly just a tiny portion of possibilities.
Then for some strange reason the end section is basically all classical guitar etudes that have only fingerstyle technique in common with the rest of the book. They are all well-known etudes by famous classical guitar composers but no credit is given in the book. There's no real development into this section and there's almost none of the ideas from the earlier parts applicable here.

I've reviewed hundreds of guitar books in my teaching and this one has some nice elements in the sections on patterns and chords. They should be applied better, however. Overall, I can't recommend the book really. Maybe if it were $5 or free, then I would say it is worth at least the time to look at.