Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Bluegrass Guitar (184)

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

 

 

This book is good in that it provides something for the beginner to the intermediate. I've owned it over a year and haven't made it through yet. The CD is helpful, as all of the songs in the book are on the CD. The arrangements for the songs are well-written and vary in level.

I think this book would be most useful for guitarists who have some experience with the instrument in a different type of music. With several years of playing rock guitar, this book made learning some basic bluegrass style and building a basic repertoire a snap. Someone who has no knowledge of music or other experience on the guitar may not find it so easy.

There are quite a few songs in tab, some good intro and ending licks, strum patterns (all played on the CD). I feel for the price more songs would have been nice. One negative thing is that the singing on the CD (for those with lyrics) is some of the worst I have ever heard in any genre. But the point of the CD is learning the instrument, not enjoying the vocals, so I guess it can be overlooked.

All in all, not a bad book for a lower-intermediate and above guitarists with no prior knowledge of bluegrass.

Super beginning bluegrass instruction. Great deal for twelve bucks. The CD is wonderful and makes it easy to play along. There are "breaks" versions and "backup" versions of all the songs in the book--I found that very helpful! The songs are extremely simple renditions of a few traditional bluesgrass songs such as Pretty Polly, Nine Pound Hammer,Foot Prints in the Snow, Rolling in My Sweet Baby's Arms. I learned "Salt Creek" from it. I already knew a pretty good rendition of Dan Crary's "Soldier's Joy" and I think the verson in this book is very simple. A bit too simple for anyone but a true beginner. There a nice section devoted to reading tab and also playing some very basic bluegrass licks. Definitely worth $12 if you are a beginner. Intermediate/Advanced players should pass--you probably already know everything in the book. Super beginner book.

For guitarists wanting to learn bluegrass, I recommend, "Teach Yourself Bluegrass Guitar" by Russ Barenburg. It contains many bluegrass classics and all of them are included on its CD. Each song is played twice, once with lead guitar and once with rhythm only for practicing. (Which is a nice feature because most instructional CDs want you to use the balance control to isolate the rhythm part, but most "boom-boxes" these days don't have that control anymore.) While none of the songs are played really slowly for beginners, Russ isn't burning up the strings either. The songs are played at a moderate performance pace - suitable for learning. The music on this CD is so good that I often listen to it in my car just for fun.

I picked up this book from a local music store and have had a blast working through the material. I've played guitar for a few years and have always loved listening to and watching bluegrass, but never knew how to get started. This book taught me everything I needed to know in terms of picking patterns, hammers, pull-offs, slides, and more. The wide variety of songs, both for back-up and for soloing, proved to be very helpful. The CD was also extremely helpful because it has back-up tracks for all of the flatpicking solo songs like "Salt Creek" and "Blackeberry Blossom." This book was very helpful to me and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to get started with flatpicking/bluegrass.

This book is great for learning to flatpick bluegrass music. I prefer some of the arrangements to those in Happy Traum's book, and the inclusion of 2 versions of each song on the CD make this great for those with less Bluegrass familiarity.

My son expressed an interest in learning to play blue grass guitar. He attends college away from home. He is a beginning guitar player. I on the other hand have been playing for some time, just not blue grass.

We gave this book to him for Christmas and we went through it together. The songs in the book and CD are blue grass standards. The tablet form made it easy for my son to get started, as he does not read music.

In all I would say this is a good book for a beginning guitar player interested in the blue grass style of music, or even a mid level player with no background in blue grass.

I don't really use this book as an instructional tool, but I do play some of the songs. The print makes the tab a little more difficult to read than other books that I own, but it's still pretty clear. The song selection is nice. The CD is a bonus, but the singing was distracting. I should also mention that the songs are presented in tablature only, so those who are looking for standard notation will be disappointed. My husband owns the Teach Yourself Bluegrass Banjo book. The books don't include exactly the same songs, but there are several of the same tunes that we can play together. I found Mel Bay First Lessons Flatpicking Guitar Book/CD Set to be much more helpful in learning to play bluegrass guitar, while Bluegrass Guitar Classics: 22 Carter-Style Solos is my favorite collection of easy bluegrass songs.

This is a great book for picking up some bluegrass basics, and learning some canonical tunes in the process. The play-along CD is great for connecting the "feel" with the written music, and it offers both complete tracks (vocals, guitar, banjo, mandolin, bass) and "backing" tracks with the guitar taken out for you to step in as a member of the band.

Like some other comment-writers, though, I come from a music background and am used to reading standard music notation-- I found reading the tabs difficult. I ultimately had to translate the tunes I most wanted to learn into standard notation on staff paper, which is work I would rather the book did for me. If the "Teach Yourself" series does another edition, I hope they include tabs for the fingerings and standard for the, well... music.

Still a worthwhile book, though, and I would recommend it despite having tabs only.

Coming from a classical music background, it'll take me extra hours /days to learn to read the tablature and finding the right sounding note on the fretboard. Because of this, the usefulness of this book decreses, and therefore I prefer "Bluegrass Guitar" by Happy Traum, which has not only tablature but also staff with streble cleff side by side. Traum's book is also twice the music material than Barenberg's book and sells about the same price.