Features
- Plastic Comb: 46 pages
- Published by: Red Dog Music Books July 5, 2007
- Written in: English, Spanish
- ISBN 10 Number: 1934777137
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-1934777138
-
Book Dimensions:
10.6 x 8.6 x 0.2 inches
- Weighs: 5.6 ounces
Product Description
TAB, standard notation, performance notes, all licks recorded on CD.
This book is loaded with neat ideas.
Fingerstyle guitar playing is a unique experience that allows the guitarist to explore the full range of the instrument s emotional spectrum. Perhaps that is why this versatile style appeals to all age groups and music tastes.
Here you will learn 101 interesting and varied fingerstyle accompaniment patterns that are suitable for students, teachers, and working musicians. The patterns, which range from very easy to intermediate in difficulty, cover a wide variety of sounds applicable to popular music, folk, blues, country, and gospel guitar.
Because this is a collection not a graded method it is not necessary to work through the examples in chronological order. Simply find a pattern you like on the CD and try playing it on your guitar. If the chosen pattern is too difficult, save it for later and try another one now. You will soon find that this sort of exploration is both fun and instructional.
A lot of fingerpicking accompaniment books make the error of showing all patterns in a fixed chord position, but this is not actually how we fingerpick in real life. Thus, a number of the examples here have moving notes that add interesting motion to the basic harmony.
Each pattern is played four times at a moderate tempo on the companion CD. A drum count-off helps the user begin playing with the recorded pattern on the correct beat.
The patterns would appeal to any guitarist who enjoys listening to artists like James Taylor, John Denver, Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, the Indigo Girls, Mississippi John Hurt (although this is not strictly a blues book; for that, please see my 101 Mississippi Delta Blues Cottonpicking Guitar Licks), Peter, Paul and Mary, roots music, soft-to medium rock. It s a great book for any guitar player who just feels like noodling around with some new ideas.
Finally, the book contains a helpful essay, supplemented with examples, entitled Chord Theory 101. This section of the book will help the beginner with the rudiments of basic chord theory, chord embellishment, and the art of applying fingerstyle guitar accompaniments to real songs.
Overall, an great fingerpicking guitar reference book, and an great value.
Prerequisite Ability - Early intermediate or better fingerstyle guitar player.
User Profiles
- Serious hobbyist fingerpicking guitar player.
- Gigging acoustic guitarist looking for new ideas.
- Flatpicking guitar player who wants to learn some classic fingerstyle licks.
- Any guitarist who seeks fingerstyle instruction as supplement to a fingerstyle method book.
- Guitar teachers who teach fingerpicking guitar lessons.
Goals and Purposes - Learn fingersyle guitar picking patterns, arpeggios, etc.
- General acoustic guitar instruction.
- Develop fingerstyle technique.
- Greater familiarity with guitar fingerboard.
- Explore new guitar ideas.
- Learn fingerpicking licks to apply to blues arrangements or original songs.
About The Author
Larry McCabe's credentials include an education degree from the University of Arizona, more than thirty years of music teaching experience, over eighty published music books, columns for Living Blues Magazine and Fingerstyle Guitar Magazine, and authorship of the Roy Clark Fiddle Magic Method and the Roy Clark Bluegrass Banjo Bible.
He plays electric and acoustic blues guitar, clawhammer and three-finger banjo, fiddle, and other string instruments. During his career, he has taught blues guitar lessons, banjo lessons, fiddle lessons, song writing, music theory, music history, and other subjects.
Larry has played in numerous bands including blues, classic country, rockabilly, traditional Irish, and Cajun, and he served on the prestigious W.C. Handy Blues Awards nominating committee for many years. With his wife, Becky, Larry is the owner and publisher of the popular roots music instruction book company Red Dog Music Books.
In the 1990s, he taught History of jazz music and History of Popular Music in America courses to adult education students at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. As an amateur WWII historian, Larry collected and edited 160 interviews for his book Pearl Harbor and the American Spirit (2004).
Reader Reviews
I took a chance on this one (no other reviews here), and am sure glad I did. The author, Larry McCabe is obviously a well-organized, no BS type of guy, since this spiral-bound book of fingerpicking patterns is right to the point--all the info you need with no filler. Clear tabs and he even gives brief explanations in Spanish as well as English. What is extra nice is that there are chord changes within the patterns, which will give you a much better idea of what you can do with them than the typical one chord per pattern I have seen elsewhere. The accompanying CD is well indexed and well recorded at a medium-slow pace on a solo acoustic guitar. This compilation of patterns is useful in many ways. As a buffet of different styles from different music genres, it may inspire you to look outside the box in terms of things you'd like to play. For a singer-songwriter, it is a feast of ideas for compositions, again because the patterns are setup against a background of chord progressions. This book/CD could be very useful in conjunction with a book such as "Chord Progressions For Songwriters" by Richard J. Scott (excellent book available also at Amazon. Whether you just want to learn some fun patterns by listening to the CD and finding what appeals to you (I found about forty out of the 101 that interested me) or use this smorgasbord approach to compose your own songs, you will find a winner here.
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