Customer Reviews

Mississippi Delta Blues Fingerstyle Solos Made Easy

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4 star:		(1)
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I purchased this book because I really liked McCabe's 101 Easy Fingerstyle Guitar Solos, which I've also reviewed here.

This book starts off very easy - a song with almost all open string notes - just to get you used to fingerstyle playing.

The second and third songs teach you a couple of patterns, and the songs are a little more interesting.

By the time you get to the 4th song in the book, the songs are really good. The type of song that you would play for someone and they might respond "hey, that's a cool song."

Each song has a set of introductory notes that provide chord fingerings and some general tips to help you out with the song. You can see a sample for this book using the 'look inside' feature here on Amazon. The sample they show is for the first song, which I mentioned is pretty basic, so the notes are also basic. As the songs get more complex, the notes get more detailed and helpful.

In addition to the songs, the book has a section on turnarounds. It gives 5 examples, each in a different key.

The accompanying CD plays all the songs at slow and normal speed. The slow speed is great if you are having trouble figuring out a section. Besides, the songs also sound good a slow speed.

I'm still working my way through this book, and I'm glad that I bought it.

Larry McCabe's Mississippi Delta Blues Fingerstyle Solos Made Easy is a nice little book that works well as an introduction to fingerpicking solos in the rural blues genre. The only real problem is that it's fairly thin at 32 pages. Since blues is really an aurally transmitted form, the CD is helpful, although the drum machine detracts a bit from the rural blues nature of the tunes. As other reviewers note, McCabe includes performance notes for each piece. These are very helpful; however, the book might be more effective if specific exercises for each new technique were included. Arnie Berle and Mark Galbo's Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar is better in that regard. The thing that's great, though, about McCabe's book is that the pieces sound more like rural blues right from the start (Berle and Galbo avoid 7ths and blue notes for quite a while at the start of their book). Ultimately, Berle and Galbo take the player much farther, but over a much longer time period of study, and through much more exercise-type material. Actually, the two books complement each other pretty well, and are certainly both worth purchasing.

I have been into slide open tuning and finger picking
for quite a while. But when you start on regular open
type chords for me its a little tricky. There are other great books
out there but for me they are alittle harder than what I like.
And the written music does not match the cd tracks.
All the cd tunes and written music match here. Its actually fun to practice this stuff. Starting basic and building. I am looking forward to
to more books by Larry McCabe. You can use all of these exercises for
all kinds of things. Then get his other books. I should have got this one before all the others.

The book is easy to follow and has some authentic sounding pieces that are not too difficult to play. Recommended for beginners who want to learn blues fingerpicking.

Small book but packed with punch.

This thing starts nice and slow and picks up gradually, the way I like it.

I got it for Christmas, someone got it for me through my Wish List, and within just a few days I'm on lesson 6 and loving it.

Authentic pieces, clearly written with just enough explanation without all that "history of" mumbo jumbo (hey, I've got blues history vids ok, so stop).

Definitely recommend this one for anyone who wants to try out the true blues sound of yore.

BUT...
watch out.
Blisters are a comin'. Pure D Simple.
Keeping bass patterns running with your thumb all day on an acoustic or even electric will wear your hands out like nobody's business.

Enjoy.