The Complete Blues & Ragtime Guitar Player (The Complete Guitar Player Series)

Rating:
Summary: Almost All Blues (despite the title)
Review: I have no doubt this is a good book. But as a beginning guitarist if it were not for the fact that I've spent almost a year teaching myself how to play classical guitar this book would be even more frustrating than it currently is. It has many examples of songs by old blues masters - but that's not really the reason I bought it. I bought if for the word "Ragtime" in the title as I am a big ragtime fan. Have been since my childhood days of 7 years of piano lessons - many of which included ragtime tunes. Since picking up the guitar I've been very interested in learning how to translate some of the fun, snappy feel of piano rags to the guitar. In this, I was disappointed. While technically the title is correct there are actually only 2 ragtime pieces in the whole book - every other song is blues - something I just don't have as much interest in playing. For someone interested in blues then this could possibly be an interesting book. For learning ragtime it is lacking.

The instruction itself is solid, the strum patterns, notes, tablature and standard notation are clear. But it would help had there been an accompanying cd. A lot of the songs are from old blues guitarists - most of whom I've never heard their songs although their names are familiar. Intermediate guitarists wanting to learn blues will enjoy this book. But if you want to learn ragtime guitar keep looking.

Rating:
Summary: Country Blues
Review: Piano ragtime on the guitar evolved into country blues. These are all fun to play and great tunes.