Fingerstyle Blues Songbook (Acoustic Guitar Private Lessons): Learn to Play Country Blues, Ragtime Blues, Boogie Blues & More

As a teacher looking for a good book on fingerstyle blues guitar to recommend to students (who often want to learn this style), this book has been a real find, particularly as I am not a specialist in the style myself. The book is well laid out, with explanatory chapters on overall approach, notation, tunings and techniques, plus a narrative accompanying each piece, explaining both technical particulars of the piece and a description of the style and its origins with reference to particular artists where relevant. The pieces are varied and interesting and cover a range of styles, keys and tunings, though it is not clear who wrote most of them. Some require the use of a slide, which further broadens the scope of the book. Some of the songs have lyrics, in which case, the melody is notated separately above the guitar staff, along with the first verse of lyrics (to show timing). Remaining verses are given as text at the end of the piece.Although I have only tried the first few pieces at the time of writing, all appear to be accessible to guitarists of post-beginner to intermediate ability. I am not sure at this point how progressive the pieces are in terms of difficulty, but a visual inspection suggests some progression, though just as important is the breadth aspect (coverage of different styles, tunings and techniques, such as slide). The icing on the cake is the CD, which really brings the pieces to life with excellent performances and slow versions of all the tracks.Hard to see what more you could want from a general introductory book to this style and the cost makes it a no-brainer.

I'm enjoying this book. It's probably not for absolute beginners but it's accessible for a beginner/intermediate level player like myself who wants to improve their fingerpicking. It's not really an instruction/lesson book, so someone with no fingerpicking knowledge at all may benefit from a little fingerpicking practice/instruction before picking this book up, but there are some nice songs in there that a beginner will be able to have go at pretty much straight away.I didn't recognize many of the tunes at first read/listen, but the downloads helped me get started and it's going to keep me busy for a while. There aren't loads of songs... but it's not an expensive book! Easy to read, good music downloads and I consider it good value for money.

This book is probably not suitable for those starting out playing guitar as absolute beginners. For those who tried it and failed, work on basic strumming first and learning chords then learning songs etc. Contrary to what some reviewers have said, this book is suitable for those guitarists starting to learn finger picking. If one is patient and works methodically through the pieces without rushing (and they are played slowly at first for this reason), then you will make progress over time. I did just that and after around 9 months, I could play all the picking pieces in the book. Learning these gave me good grounding for progressing to the Kenny Sultan book Blues Guitar Legends.Which brings me to the two minor flaws.Flaw 1 - slide playing is much more difficult than just finger picking and requires learning of wholly different set of techniques which this book does not actually teach. So I decided not to dilute my efforts and focus on just the one thing (slide can wait until I have mastered basic finger style). I consider the inclusion of several slide pieces to be a mistake and it would have been better to have just stuck to picking pieces for content, given who the book was aimed at. Kenny Sultan did just that and it works very well indeed.Flaw 2 - singing whilst it is possibly useful context to hear singing over the tunes, it is not helpful in what is a guitar tutor book. In fact it gets irritating after a while as it distracts from the picking that one is trying to hear. The singing isn't that great either.Overall - recommended but be prepared to restrain yourself from getting diverted into slide (which of course, is a whole new world of technique to be mastered, if you like that sort of thing).

Not many songs to learn

Excellent roots blues tuition from Steve James in this book. I was already familiar with the author from his "roots and blues fingerstyle guitar" book. I would recommend the Fingerstyle Blues Songbook as an excellent companion to this previous title and as an essential resource for anyone interested in old time blues and how to play it. There is a wide variety of songs in different keys and tunings, slide material and plenty of alternating basslines.

Absolutely brilliant book and the cd plays each tune twice, once at full speed and once slowed down which is a tremendous help when you're just starting to learn a tune. The music is written in notation as well as tablature which is a help whether you read music or not; you do however need to have an intermediate standard of playing, definitely not a first music book.

Brought as a present and was told they loved the book it has some good songs and easy to follow.