Customer Reviews

Laurence Juber: The Guitarist Anthology, Volume 1 (Acoustic Masterclass)

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

 

 

The two Juber Acousic Masterclass books are absolutely excellent. Quite challenging for me--a mid-level guitarist--but enormously instructive. I've found that my fingerstyle technique, and overall guitar knowledge has taken a big jump forward, as a result. The tabulature is very accurate. I bought the two CD's Guitarist and The Collection to accompany these, and between the two books and two CD's most of the songs are covered. I found that the CD's that come with the book are helpful to a point, but to really get a flavor for what he's trying to do with the song, it is best to hear the real piece played up to tempo. I've gone through this process of hearing the piece, thinking "I could never play that in a million years", then slogging through it, and eventually getting it under my fingers. Very rewarding. Recommend highly.

I have been playing the guitar for almost 40 years. Next to Phil Keaggy I feel LJ is the master of playing the guitar and also as a teacher. I would recommend this instructional book and CD to all intermediate guitarists

This book is an excellent transcription of LJ's best tunes. Each song is shown in tablature. The book includes a CD, which LJ explains most of the songs appearing in the book. On the included teaching CD, LJ slows down some of the faster portions of his songs. If you want to play LJ's songs, this book is worth every penny.

I am very dissapointed with this product, The notation is fine and is all in the book, but Mr Juber, truly a business man! does not include the complete tunes in the cd, instead he tells you which cd you can buy to listen to it. So, not only you have to spend $25 on this, now you have to cough up the money to buy his cds as well. What he does in the included cd is to play bits of the songs slowed down in tempo, a lot of talking of obvious things if you pay attention to the notation, makes wide measure leaps and you wind up totally confused since even after hearing this "master class explanation" you won't have an idea of what the piece is supposed to sound like. I should have just played out of the powertab arrangements out there of the songs that I like and can be found on youtube. If I could have returned this book I would have done so.

The Amazon Editorial Review is incorrect and misleading. The included CD does not offer guidance on two of the fifteen arrangements. No instruction on either "Strawberry Fields" or "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" is given. Since those two pieces are the sole reason I bought the book, I am very disappointed.