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Rating: 
Summary: Shut-up Tony
Review: The instruction in this book is easy to follow and teaches you the basic techniques you need to get a true bluegrass sound out of your banjo. The CD that comes with it, however, defeats it own purpose when Tony Trishka sings over the top of the banjo. Not only does he sound God-awful, but you can't even hear the music he's teaching you to play. Even on the instrumentals it gets frustrating because he's clearly not playing the exact same tab that is in the book. To his credit, however, every thing that is in the book, even the simplest 4 note exercises, are also on the CD.So 5 stars for the book, 2 stars for the CD, 4 stars for Tony's pickin', and 1 for his singing. Unfortunately this may be the best instructional book for bluegrass banjo beginners available. And I do recommend it. Just don't expect the CD to help you through your learning very much.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: This is a great book for people who are starting the banjo. I know that it helped me out when i first started.
Rating: 
Summary: Not so fun
Review: This tutorial seemed to be written well enough, but as a complete banjo newbie I found it frustrating. It's didn't seem to offer enough variety of learning exercises at each new skill, so that I felt stuck trying to learn the same example over and over. I gave up on this book and bought "A Manual on How to Play the 5-String Bango for the Complete Ignoramus" by Wayne Erbsen (...) and I'm now having a great time learning clawhammer style as well as the slides, etc. that seemed so frustrating in Tony's book. Maybe it's better if you have more banjo experience to start with.
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