Customer Reviews

Mark Hanson's Fingerstyle Christmas Guitar: (Book & CD)12 Beautiful Songs & Carols for Solo Guitar

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Between the 1-note "Easy-TAB" books and full-blown "As Recorded" tabs, there's been a void of playable tabs for the intermediate player. Mark Hanson has filled that gap, and is the top guy out there today producing interesting arrangements for the intermediate guitar player.

If you're an absolute beginner, you can safely pass this one up, but if you have a year or two of experience under your belt, this is a great set of solos for the Christmas season. Be sure to pick it up a few months early, though, because these are NOT easy. You'll have to work at them to get them sounding nice.

Mark hasn't forgotten those of you out there with more skills, either. There are a total of 12 arrangements here - 4 easy, 4 intermediate, and 4 advanced. By the time you get to the last couple of tunes, you have some serious show-off stuff going on - way over my head, but something the advanced player can dig into, and the intermediate player can aspire to.

Highly recommended for both intermediate and advanced players.

Great collection of songs in TAB and standard notation. It is very helpful that Mr. Hanson arranged these songs within the book in 3 groups, according to the skill level needed to play them. Even the "beginner" category songs sound very full and satisfying.

Hauntingly beautiful arrangement of "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence."

Only gripe is that the songs in the book are not in the same order as on the CD. No real harm done but it would have made it a bit more convenient to be able to listen to all of the selections in one sitting while paging through the book normally.

Highly recommended.

This book is great for intermediate & advanced players.I love and find the arangements different than other books for fingerplayers & it comes with a great CD to help. This book has plenty to keep you busy for the holidays and lots to learn in new tunings and standard tunings. Great fun!!

I found this book disappointing overall, mostly due to not being aware of what I was getting I suppose... for starters, of the 12 songs, 3 are in alternate tuning, which is a hassle, 2 more in drop which is less of a hassle, secondly, the arrangements are setup to where the 2nd and 3rd pass through, they are embellished , probably to give more variety to the tunes, but I didn't particulary care for alot of it. I suppose I was expecting a more classical styled approach to the arrangements , and these don't feel , sound or play that way. Not to say they aren't good necessarily, they just felt in alot of places there were embellishments made that gave the songs less of a traditional feel and more of a loose and contemporary sound. Again, not a bad thing, but not really what I was hoping for. Next time, I'll look for something more classical or traditional oriented.

This is my second Mark Hanson fingerstyle book (the other is his Beyond Basics book.) The Christmas songs in this one are very well chosen, including absolutely stunning arrangements of Go Tell It On The Mountain and In Dulci Jubilo. It's worth the price for the CD that accompanies the book, just to hear Hanson playing!

The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is that it's misleading to call four of these songs "easy." These so-called "easy" songs are definitely not what most people would think of as easy! Others have made similar comments about the book being for intermediate to advanced players, and I completely agree. But if you have a few years playing experience and are at least an "advanced beginner" with respect to fingerstyle playing, then I highly recommend this collection of great songs.

This book has a very interesting setup which I think works well, although some may not agree. I'll state my case. The songs are sequenced in the book by 3 different skill levels (Easy, Intermediate, Advanced) and within each of those levels, the difficulty level is broken down even further. For example, Go Tell It On the Mountain, a song that I worked hard on to get ready for a Christmas CD project, is considered an intermediate level song. It was apparent to me that the last two verses were a bit out of my league given the time constraints I had.

The first two verses, however, were in my comfort zone (although still required a lot of practice). These two verses are still beautiful, complete with melodies and accompaniment bass parts and I was able to write my own introduction by taking the melody in the treble and removing the bass lines. Introducing the bass line (with the gorgeous Drop-D tuning) after this simple intro was very powerful in my opinion.

Most of the songs in this book follow this format regardless of the overall difficulty level. The songs start out relatively simple and each subsequent verse adds increasing levels of difficulty or alters the playing style. Many of the songs sound like the version you'd hear in church during the first verse, then the second verse may see you adding more hammer-ons and possibly traversing the neck a bit more to play some higher octave versions of the chords you were playing at the end of the neck, and by the end of the tune you may have added some travis picking elements, walking bass-lines, flourishes and many other techniques that make these renditions really stand out.

As stated in the introduction, these songs serve as templates. If you can manage to play the entire piece as written, great, you have a standalone solo complete with bass-lines, melody and a contemporary stylistic flair that will impress your friends and family. I think the listening CD is worth the price of the set alone, although I wish there had been some performance suggestions on the disk like most of Mark's books. You will only get the performance speed versions. There are some written performance suggestions in the book, although not enough for my intermediate likings :) I still need my hand held! Good luck with Winter Wonderland! That song is a killer! I may be able to play it by 2010!

This book contains beautiful arrangments for the intermediate to advanced guitar player. Players who are not yet at an intermediate level of playing may find the arrangments frustrating. Several of the songs are in an alternate tuning. Even the simplist arrangement involves quite a bit of skill. The reward for the guitarist's work is a beautiful arrangment with depth. This book comes with a CD which allows the guitarist to hear how the arrangements should sound.

Wow........ Yes, now this is just great. You know it's always worth buying a book if 1 song is great... There are a couple of Great Arrangements from Mark Hanson in this book. You better be ready though if you start the 4 more challenging songs from this book because they are very difficult for most people. Mark Hanson has some difficult ways of playing some of the chords. I even had to rearranged some minor things to make them more playable for me. I am a Acoustic Fingerstyle Player for a couple of years now, performing almost every week but these songs need a Lot of Attention and Devotion in order to be able to play them before an audience. Take a lot of time to let the songs "Sink In" to your body.

I've bought so many books for solo guitar and Mark Hanson's outshine anyone else. His arrangements are amazing, and very playable, even for a self-taught guitarist like me who only reads tablature. I get many compliments on my playing now, and it's all thanks to Mark Hanson's beautiful arrangements both in this book and in his "Great American Tablature Song Book", which has such a great variety of music (and is available with others on his website, if not through Amazon). Highly recommended.

This is 2nd Christmas guitar book I have purchased and it is clearly the better one. The book is divided by degree of playing ability, which eliminates frustration. The "easy songs" like Silent Night don't sound to the ear like a simple song. Hanson does a great job of arrangement, making each song in the book sound rich with multi-string voicings. I also think the Author's notes on how to approach playing each song is fantastic. To me this is a time saver, not having to figure out the most efficient way to play through some challenging measures. Lastly, you get a CD to hear and play along! Get this book!