Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar (Book and Audio CD) by Arnie Berle.
..also heard that this one was good too:
Fingerstyle Solo Guitar (DVD) by Mark Hanson.
..looking for a good fingerstyle instruction book that assumes I'm an idiot and goes from there :)
yeah i tried the beginners f'style blues book.
very disappointed. So many books like this are the same. They say "beginner" on the cover...and by page 3 they are doing barre chords and assuming you are an expert.
I liked a few of the exercises though. But not many.
If you are at the stage where barre chords are no problem and you have good stretch, then go ahead. If not, look elsewhere.
I find it so annoying to buy beginners stuff that really isn't!
this site's taught me 500% more than all the books on my shelf put together, no lie.
Matt
I bought Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar by Arnie Berle.
It seems to be a very reliable book, but it goes pretty fast on the basic notions, so it may be not the instructional book you're looking for. As far as I'm concerned, i kept it for later, when I'm more advanced.
I'm currently practising with Mark Hanson's "Art of contemporary Travis Picking" that assumes you're a complete idiot (so am I) and takes you by the hand fron there.
You'll find a good review on this book in this forum, in "Reviews of instructional material".
If I'm not in the band
Don't mean I'm square
Mercury Rev - Car Wash Air
Thanks Matt...agreed that this site is very good. Thanks for the advice.
Curious...how did you go about using this site to start learning. There is soo much good information here, I find myself a bit overwhelmed.
Right now, I'm working on chord progression (A, G, C, E, F Am etc) as well as two songs (Twinkle Twinkle and House of the Rising Sun lessons by David Hodge).
..man...changing chords is quite the challenge sometimes :)
Hi Darren and Matt.
Darren: I own both of these and feel that they are both excellent. Which one you choose depends on what your goal is.
The Mark Galbo/Arnie Berle book covers fingerstyle blues exclulsively, so you will learn 12-bar blues with an alternating bass. It starts you off with simple 12-bar blues in several different keys using basic open chords (E,D,G,A, etc.). By the end of the book you are playing some very impressive blues classics.
Mark Hanson's book is a more general intro to fingerstyle which touches on a variety of styles. The first few tunes sound quite impressive, but use deceptively easy 2-finger chords. Over the course of the book you will learn some contemporary fingerstyle, 12-bar blues and travis-picking.
My recommendation would be to do them in the order you and I listed them: Galbo first, Hanson second. Good luck!
Matt: I think you might be mistaking Mark Galbo/Arnie Berle's excellent book for another one. I am about 1/3 of the way through it and have not encountered a barre chord, yet. If memory serves, there are no barres required in the entire book, unless you're referring to the partial-barre Long-A which is introduced fairly early in the book. I am definitely struggling with that one, but as Mark suggests on the CD: if it's too difficult just move on to the next tune.
That almost sounded musical. Thanks Guitar Noise!
No, it is the same book. Although the A you mention might be easy for some, its not what i would call real beginner stuff.
As for the order of learning, I found myself picking through the songs that 1. I had a fair chance of learning (because of chord simplicity) and 2. liked and was familiar with. David's lessons are just fantastic.
Other than that, the other thing I love about this site is no question goes unanswered, no matter how dumb you might feel asking it!
Matt
I see your point about the Long-A, Matt. After reading Blind_Lemon_Pye's post I recalled that I was actually 2 + years into my study of guitar before starting on this book, so perhaps my earlier comments should be taken with a grain of salt. By the way, I'm now about 3 years in and still consider myself a beginner!
I have been making slow and steady progress thanks to this site and a few other excellent resources. Some times it's hard to remember what it was like when I first started. For example, I first discovered Guitar Noise during my first few months of playing and at that time I found even Horse with No Name challenging!
I guess what I'm saying is patience is a highly under-valued trait when it comes to learning guitar. Except for a fortunate few it takes a lot of time and work. Even a ham-fisted dude like me can learn eventually!
Bob
That almost sounded musical. Thanks Guitar Noise!
Ok here I go with my opinion again, weither you like it or not.
Beginner Fingerstyle is not Beginner Guitar!!!
Authors teaching fingerstyle are doing just that. You are learning to use your picking hand. It is assumed that at this point you are already familar with playing guitar in general and if you need more instruction with stuff like barre chords you wont find that in most fingerstyle lesson books.
