Customer Reviews

More Blues You Can Use

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

 

 

I think both this book and the original "Blues You Can Use" are terrific. I learned a ton from the first one, and I'm learning another ton from this one. What I like best about these books is that the material never sounds stilted or dull--as it does in too many other books.

Be warned, though: this book is quite a bit more demanding than the first one. It's almost like there was supposed to be a "middle" book between the first one and this one. There is some EXTREMELY fast playing in the practice tracks. It will take me lots and lots of practice and patience to get them down.

Beginners should steer clear of this book. You'll only be disappointed. Try the first "Blues You Can Use" book instead.

That being said--the stuff sounds exciting. I can't wait until I master all of it. It's a great chance to learn how some of those great high-speed riffs I've heard in the past work. Because I don't think I'll ever be able to work them out on my own.

More Blues You Can Use picks up where Blues You Can Use left off. The two books are a great combo for self-teaching blues electric guitar. In this second book, Ganape puts more focus on rhythm guitar than in the first book, with each lesson including a rhythm lesson that is very useful. The scale portion of each lesson is also much more instructive--he gets beyond the (necessary and useful) pentatonic pattern inculcation of the first book, and into lead patterns and runs that can help in building new, improvised solos and licks. The solos are now generally two DIFFERENT choruses, which adds to repertoire and illustrates more of the principles of improv and lick playing. And more important, the solos are (as they were in the first book too) tasteful and progressively more challenging.

You can actually learn a lot from this book in practical terms and principles.

This book picks up where "Blues you can use" left off. The lessons and exercises are significantly more advanced and produce a much more professional grade blues vibe in my opinion. Check out how the beginner book "blues you can use" has a lot more reviews than this one since not as many people make it this far. I worked my way through John Ganapes' first book over the course of a year and am really glad I got this one. For me The Blues is a journey and the "blues you can use" series has really helped me along the way. After buying over a dozen of these blues lesson books I've found John Ganapes' are far and away the best...but then again everybody has different tastes and abilities. If you consider yourself an advanced beginner or even an intermediate blues guitarist, you owe this book to yourself.

I've been playing guitar for about three years now, but I never really practice much. I'd just learn a few parts of songs that sounded cool, and then sit in frong of the tv playing them and messing around in pentatonic scales. I bought this book without the first one because I am quite familiar with 12 bar blues forms and techniques from guitar one magazines. This book is great. I just started the first lesson, and it begins exactly where I needed to begin at. No skimming throught trying to find pages I don't already know. The book is well written and explains the songs and note selections very well. The main point of the book seems to be to get you to creatively follow the changes of a 12 bar blues form, in both rhythm and lead. I imagine I will work on each lesson for about a week at a time. I would recommend this book to those who practiced and enjoyed the first book, or to those blues fans that have a hard time picking notes outside pentatonic scales. Be prepared to work hard on each lesson though!

I got though Blues You Can Use in about 7 months, then ground to a halt with this book by Chapter 4 after about 3 months. It was just too difficult for me, especially trying it on acoustic as I had done for Blues You Can Use. Frustrated, I turned to Ganapes' beautiful Jazzin' the Blues volume, because it was more acoustic friendly, then I tried the Licks book, which finally got me up to speed to return to More Blues You Can Use. After the Licks book, MBYCU seems much easier, but I have to warn others that the pace and difficulty of More Blues You Can Use is probably a step or two beyond the toughness of the final few chapters of Blues You Can Use.

This book is a bit thrilling in that it clearly tries to make a guitar player out of you, and does not dumb it down at all. For this it clearly deserves 5 stars. On the other hand, the songs are technically impressive rather than beautiful, and the chapters can be a bit of a chore, especially for a fool like me who keeps banging at this with an acoustic guitar! In my opinion, the Blues You Can Use series of books towers above all the other instructional methods for guitar. For his service to guitar players throughout the world, John Ganapes needs to be rewarded with an honorary or adjunct teaching position at Berklee. These books are that special.

If you're a beginning/intermediate electric guitar player, going through this book and it's easier companion "Blues You Can Use" is the quickest way to learn the instrument. In many artists' compilation CDs, you'll see "Essential such and such", well there are essential topics that needs to be covered in electric guitar playing too, and these two books does a pretty good job covering the essentials of guitar playing. Spend a year working on these two books (the two books combined will give you about 50 songs to practice), and you'll be playing most styles with inpunity with the steady increase in speed gained here. Now consider that compared to spending few fruitless years with a guitar instructor, you'll see what I mean. Each song is written to illustrate specific structure or a technique and you'll be learning tons of information as you go along. These two books are the most economic way to master the essentials of electric guitar playing both money and time wise. Some people may not like the style of blues guitar presented in this book as it's bit of blues/rock style mixed in, but to get the basics down I can't recommend a better set of books.

..it is. After "Blues You Can Use", it keeps me going by introduction of theory, new chords and solo exercises. Arpeggios pattern are introduced here, very useful and important concept, though it is not clearly explain how to practice it One has to simply memorize it. Maybe there are some better books in this venue that I will take advantage of later, but for now I stick to Genapes.

I purchased this book after completing the first "Blues you can Use" book. Very cool - I'm learning so much from both of these books! This book has some stuff that is much faster, I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to match the speed, but it still sounds cool even at a little slower tempo! Beginners should definitely start with the first book of this series, and get the "chord" book to help with the theory side of things. I've been working my way through this book for about 3 months now, and am only about 2/3 finished, so it will keep me entertained for a while. Also, I find that some of these lessons are much more fun to play when you turn your amp up loud, and maybe even kick on some OD and wah. Just sayin'....

I found the lead breaks simplistic, easy and well composed. Good to start out on. For the intermediate to advanced player new ideals / knowledge is offered. The lessons increase in difficulty as you learn more about the use of technique and the scale relationships up the neck. Don't be fooled by the simple. This book will reveal new ways around and through the blues. I'm an intermediate to advanced player and I have learn't from these lessons. Plus I enjoyed it.

I learned alot from his first book - more than any other book I've used. I was happy to see he had a sequel to it. The difficulty is about the same as the last several songs in his first book. This time he has a lead and rythm part for each song - unlike his first book. If you enjoyed his first book, you'll enjoy this just as well.