Customer Reviews

John Renbourn Fingerstyle Guitar Book/3-CD set

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

 

 

I have been a great fan of John Renbourn's for a couple of decades and never thought I'd ever have the opportunity to learn some of his exquisitely beautiful pieces. This book and companion CDs now make that possible. I am particularly taken by the "Celtic Melodies & Open Tunings" CD, which includes several relatively straightforward pieces in open tunings. The book has a literal transcription of each piece, and the CD has each piece played at least twice, once an "official, performance" version and a second, with Renbourn talking through the piece. I found the latter particularly charming. If you don't know John Renbourn, get one of his CDs, e.g. "Black Balloon", or get this book/CD collection. John Renbourn is one of the most tasteful and delightful guitarists of all time.

Having recently bought a copy of John Renbourn Fingerstyle Guitar, I was pleased to find the book (with accompanying CDs) gives a balanced representation of the different styles of music for which the master is known. Standard notation coupled with tablature and the CDs offers a student of fingerstyle guitar an opportunity to learn these tunes regardless of your level of written musical literacy. However, this is no beginners book and at least an intermediate level of fingerstyle guitar fluency is required. For most of us, it will require work -- but the rewards of learning some of the arrangements of one of the all-time great guitarists is worth it.

Hm. I agree with another reviewer, not a book for beginners. However, I can't give it 5 stars, because if you're at the level of playing which apparently is assumed by Mr Renbourn as he introduces a piece and then says "ok, let's play it together" then you probably don't need all that much instruction at all - this is more like an "advanced players' workshop" where he discusses stylistic ideas rather than the nuts and bolts of learning to play fingerstyle guitar. I would say Mr. Renbourn is a wonderful player but perhaps not the best teacher. I'm basically writing this review so that another hopeful guitar player who thinks they're going to get three hours of fingerstyle instruction understands that unless they already have a very good grasp of technique, they will feel rapidly overwhelmed. This isn't to say someone with enormous desire and effort couldn't deconstruct the pieces using the music/tab and listening over and over Mr Renbourn play and talk, but that would largely require the student to create their own method. I would recommend rather the books by Mark Hanson, who takes apart the pieces in his books phrase by phrase, slowly, patiently and clearly, and gives you patterns to practice so that you can build on those and eventually take on the entire piece.

First up, I want to agree with the other reviewers. This is definitely not a book for beginners. However, the quality of the transcriptions and the breadth of the material covered is truly spectacular. Renbourn is a tremendously versatile player and he shares the full range of his talent in this book. There's folk, celtic, jazz... well, just like the title says. I've been working in this book for nearly a year now and am finding it very difficult, but very rewarding. I believe that if someone were able to master everything in this book, they would have a sense of how Renbourn plays. Not that you would "master" the John Renbourn style (is that even possible?), but you would be able to do a credible imitation of it. The reason I give this four instead of five stars is because of the CD instruction. While the cover of the book promises "note-by-note, phrase-by-phrase instruction," the actual instruction consists of John playing each song, talking a bit about the song (such as mentioning the composer or something that makes this song an important one to learn), then playing it again while talking the student through the song. There are many parts which would warrant a slowed down version, perhaps some hints at left hand fingerings (you would probably *see* this in the video version of the book, but in the audio CD it is left a mystery). If you need teaching, you will find the teaching tracks lacking. But if you love John Renbourn and already have the songs in your head (and you're already a competent fingerstyle player), this is a great book to have.

I've seen better. Contains a number of good tunes (nothing by John Renbourn can be that bad, right?) The only problem really, (and it's a big one) is that most of the tunes have been over-simplified from the original recordings. For example, the first two, 'Judy' and 'Angie' are favorite tunes of mine, but have been so over simplified in this book that they are not worth learning.

Cheers
Troll