Product Description
This book with CD contains a wealth of time-honored songs arranged for beginning to intermediate guitarists. Many styles are covered including American standards, country songs, blues, hymns and spirituals, calypso, train songs, European standards, children s songs, Christmas songs, Stephen Foster songs, patriotic songs, light classical, and more. These great-sounding solos can be played on any 6 or 12-string guitar. The companion CD contains every song in the book played note-for-note.
Mel Bay’s 101 Easy Fingerstyle Guitar Solos
Have you grown frustrated with trying to learn from books, software, or cheap introductory videos
with little useful content? Click Now for serious guitar training.
Check back with Country Guitar Lesson for more Country Guitar information!
Popularity: 1%
November 14th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
I really like the way this book is written. I loved the spiral binder! It is clear, concise and has many favorites. The fingerings are straight forward and anyone should be able to play these songs. But, the fingerings do not emphasize the alternating thumb bass that has become popular.
[...].
The 19 European songs seemed to be just filler as I have never heard of fifteen of them. [...].
The absence of any Travis picking information hurts this book and may mislead the novice player.
[...]. Still I say, buy this book if you are a beginner finger style player. But be advised you may not get everything you paid for. Plus, there is much more to finger picking you will need to learn. It is just so nice to have 98 or 99 songs to work with all in one place.
[..]
Rating: 4 / 5
November 14th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
I bought this book because I wanted to learn fingerstyle guitar. I’ve been playing guitar for a little over a year, but not fingerstyle.
The book doesn’t contain any instructional material – just 101 short songs in standard notation and tablature. Each song is one page long (or shorter), so no page turning while playing.
I found that I recognized most of the songs, once I heard them, even though I didn’t recognize all the titles.
I like this book for the following reasons:
1. The songs are easy, so you can get some quick wins and feel a sense of progress and accomplishment. Now, ‘easy’ is a relative term. When I first tried most of the songs, they didn’t seem so easy, but then again, I hadn’t played fingerstyle guitar before. However, with a bit of practice and determination, I’ve been able to pick up most of the songs that I’ve tried (about a dozen of them so far).
2. Because the songs are not hard, I can practice playing the songs without relying 100% on the tab. I’ve learned how to read music – but that was just single note stuff. Learning to read multiple notes at a time was a new thing for me. But, because the songs are simple, it’s not an overwhelming task.
3. Even though the songs are simple, they sound good. There is something about fingerstyle guitar, even when simple, that just sounds great. Because you are playing melody and bass line, you can play these songs and people will recognize the song. (Whereas when you just learn chords to a song, without singing or some other accompaniment, the songs are incomplete). So, it’s nice to learn some songs that I can play for other people.
4. They help learn skills gradually. For example, this afternoon I learned how to play “Skip to My Lou.” OK – maybe not at the top of your list of songs to learn – but my daughter liked when I played it. This song contains one hammer-on. I can play lots of hammer-ons when playing in a lead/solo style, but it’s a bit different when playing fingerstyle – with other notes at the same time. So, it was nice to just have one to contend with. Now I’m ready to tackle something more challenging.
5. The spiral binding of the book is nice – it always lays flat on my music stand.
6. The CD is great for when you just aren’t quite sure how a song should sound.
So, if you are thinking about learning fingerstyle guitar, I think this is a good book to have around. For me, I want to go way beyond this book, but I feel the book is helping me learn. Lots of good ‘campfire’ songs here, too.
Rating: 5 / 5