Customer Reviews

Mel Bay Brazilian Jazz Guitar (Book & CD)

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

 

 

I've purchased over 50 guitar books over the years, and this is one of the best. Here's why:

1. Comes with CD (essential to learning).
2. Excellent arrangements that sound great on solo guitar.
3. Each song has: a) lead sheets and lyrics, b) solo guitar in tab & standard notation; and c) rhythm accompaniment study. The CD has the solo and accompaniment study for each song. The solo guitar versions of these songs make a good CD by themselves.
4. Printing is clear and easy to read.
5. Thirteen full songs. Not just excerpts, not just chords, but entire songs.
6. Very reasonably priced.

This is not a beginner's book. I consider myself an early intermediate player and I find these pieces challenging. But they are very rewarding, thanks to the beautiful arrangements. They really sound good.

If you're wondering how tough the songs are to play, check the preview and try playing the first song in the book. It's a good example of both the level of difficulty and the excellence of the arrangements.

This book sets a high standard for what a guitar book should be. Obviously, a great deal of time and effort has gone into it, and it shows. In turn, it is worth my spending a good deal of time and effort to master these songs. And I'll certainly be buying other guitar books by John Zaradin and Mike Christiansen. Thanks to both of them for an outstanding product!

(BTW, the other guitar books I would rate as faves are "Fingerstyle Blues Songbook" by Steve James, "Mel Bay's Complete Country Blues Guitar Book" by Stefan Grossman, and "Guitar Atlas: Celtic" by David Ernst.)

don't believe what others say, this is really a great book. go to the roots of the chords and build form there with your pinky finger. try different strums and plucks. You'll get it. After forty years I can finally play a really COOL tune, instead of only channeling Jimi Hendrix. Trying to do the opposite, with a REALLY laid back, melancholy (well, that's the same), almost shy virtuoso approach is opening up many doors. This music is everything American def medal is not. Brilliant. Get this book as a portal. It includes at least three ways to approach each song. And so you see that each time you play them, you must play it differently (or are free to improvise as you wish) LEarn tunes with more than one two or even three chords. YOu will not regret it. Great place to continue and expand and to breathe.

This book was just what I was looking for. It features great Brazilian songs, it's laid out in tab and standard notation, there are three versions of each song so you can also learn the rhythm parts, and the included CD is high quality. It's intermediate, I'd say, and for beginners it'll be a bit tricky learning to move between chords. Still, it's not very difficult; I'm still a beginner and chose this book because the challenge is what helps me improve. Bottom line: if you'd like to learn some great Bossa tunes and you don't mind working at it, this is the book for you.

Good news first: this book comes with both notes and tab, as well as rhythm and solo arrangements. It also has a diverse set of songs and artists. Great. . .but what makes this definitely *not* a 5-star book?

(1) The sample playing on the CD, to be perfectly frank, is not that great. It doesn't sound like the guitarist played with a metronome, much less had much of a desire to keep an even tempo. I know it's 'jazz' but I don't think that means thrown even tempo out the window. The 'solo version' of Girl from Ipanema exemplifies this. As a result, it's kind of annoying when you're trying to play along with the CD and the player sounds like s/he's trying to frantically race you.

(2) There are no chord charts, which would have been extremely helpful. Since there are no chord charts, you are left spending time figuring out how to finger the Fmaj7 so that you can move from a fretted G on the E string to an open E string, while keeping the general chord form. This can take several minutes.

Repairing these two things would make this a 5-star book! Alas, 3-stars. I would give it 3.5 if I could.

I found the arrangements satisfying and helpful for an intermediate guitarist like myself. But as with all Mel Bay guitar books with tablature, why the heck doesn't someone edit the final draft to catch all the damn errors. The tablature and standard notation are not the same, and notes that would be helpful are less so when they're placed on the wrong line. The error rate is not much higher in this book than most other Mel Bay products, which means it is still totally unacceptable. It's like buying a novel that no one ever spell-checked.

This product is terrible.
I would have sent it back immediately had I not had to go out of town for 3 weeks.

The arrangements are choppy and harmonically uninteresting. The CD is amateurish and rough.

There are much better arrangements out there. Brazilian Masters comes to mind as does Noriyasu Takeuchi's effort.

To my mind, it is worth attempting to play a more difficult arrangement than to settle for something like this which is simpler but very off the mark as far as Brazilian music goes.

I struggled for months learning a lot of the pieces in this book before I finally came to my senses and moved on.

Ultimately (the prospective buyer should know), I came to realize this wasn't really a book that taught Brazilian guitar styles but, instead, a book that taught the authors' guitar styles... which, a lot of the time, had absolutely nothing to do with Brazilian music, except for the fact that the arrangements happened to be of Brazilian classics. To wit, I don't think Jobim, Gilberto, Bonfa and those of their genre would ever have played their music the way these guys do.

I have, however, since bought "The Brazilian Guitar Book" by Nelson Faria, and it has proven to provide a much more fulfilling, enriching and authentic experience... for what that's worth.

This is a great book and CD combination for the Brazilian Jazz Guitar student or even any advancing guitarist that wants to branch out and study some of the best examples of "those 'SMOOTH' Brazilian songs we all have heard at time or another.
The CD is solid and the way the artists and authors have taken the time to break each song down into the solo part and then the rhythm part is not only brilliant (I wish more example books and CD's would do the same); but essential for a student of fine guitar to be able to have those separations available.
I am only afraid of one thing, I will hopefully not wear the CD out as I study it and just listen to it for pleasure, it truly is a treasure.
I highly reccomend any serious guitar "Artist" just learning or exploring new territory to buy this great collection of work (although I would like to have more songs) and accompaning CD.

The arrangements sound great and are pretty simple. I like that a lead sheet and lyric sheet, in English, was included with the book. And a CD of the arrangements is always appreciated.

After working with Nelson Faria's excellent Brazilian Guitar Method for awhile, I was looking for authentic arrangements of complete tunes that I could play unaccompanied. This book delivers with great tune choices, all Brazilian classics, and a large well designed book. The solo arrangements are intermediate in level and require a pretty solid knowledge of typical jazz chord forms, though TAB can help with this I guess. There are quite a few interesting and characteristic Brazilian open string voicings not typically found in jazz. The lead sheets with decent changes and english lyrics and comping chorus are a nice bonus. All in all, each arrangement presents a creaqtive solution to combining melody, chords, and bass simultaneously. The most challenging aspect of authentic Brazilian music is rhythmic feel ("Ginga"). Unfortunately the examples on the cd are out of tune and stiffly performed. If you are already familiar with Bonfa, Gilberto, Baden Powell, Toquinho, etc, you can adapt the feel to make the tunes flow more smoothly. There are chord substitutions and some liberty is taken with the melodies. I have been warmly received playing these arrangements in public and have come another big step closer to getting at the heart of this amazing and timeless music. The arrangements are designed for Classical fingerstyle guitar. This book is a great value, and worth the time it takes to master the tunes, which are ultimately playable-not nearly as rough as the Barbossa-Lima book. I graduated from Berklee if that makes a difference.