"Acoustic Guitar Styles" introduces the most popular traditional styles for the acoustic guitar. The step-by-step approach, using a small repertoire of well-known songs, enables the student to explore various styles that can be adapted to play personal favorites. Although a basic knowledge of the guitar is assumed, even the beginner will benefit from this progressive approach.

Introduces the basics of finger-style acoustic guitar blues.

The acoustic guitar is the instrument of the people and Play Acoustic tells the people how to play it. This detailed and beautifully illustrated book explores the history of the acoustic guitar, from the jazz age to the folk revolutions of the early 1960s and late 1990s to the current rebirth of bluegrass and the singer-songwriter boom of the past decade. Skilled professional musicians and experienced tutors coach the reader through 11 styles, using exercises suitable to novice players new to each style and working up to full pieces and advanced techniques. Entire chapters are devoted to folk, rock and pop, blues, country, bluegrass, jazz, and more, with detailed guidance through both musical notation and tablature, diagrams, and explanatory text. Accompanying audio also offers listening examples of the most crucial of these exercises, to help players master each style.

(Guitar Method). A complete collection of all three Acoustic Guitar Method books in one volume! Learn how to play guitar with the only beginning method based on traditional American music that teaches you authentic techniques and songs. Beginning with a few basic chords and strums, you'll start right in learning real music drawn from blues, folk, country and bluegrass traditions. You'll learn how to find notes on the fingerboard, expand your collection of chords by learning songs in various keys, and learn different kinds of picking patterns. When you're done with this method series, you'll know dozens of the tunes that form the backbone of American music, using a variety of flatpicking and fingerpicking techniques. Songs include: Bury Me Beneath the Willow * Delia * Frankie and Johnny * The Girl I Left Behind Me * House of the Rising Sun * Ida Red * In the Pines * Little Sadie * Man of Constant Sorrow * Sally Goodin * Scarborough Fair * Will the Circle Be Unbroken? * and many more. Accompanying audio examples are all available for download!

Do you wish you could play your favorite blues music on guitar? Even if you don’t read music, it’s not difficult with Blues Guitar for Dummies. With this hands-on guide, you’ll pick up the fundamentals instantly and start jamming like your favorite blues artists! Blues Guitar for Dummies covers all aspects of blues guitar, showing you how to play scales, chords, progressions, riffs, solos, and more! It’s packed with musical examples, chords charts, and photos that let you explore the genre and play the songs of the great blues musicians. This accessible guide will give you the skills you need to: Choose the right guitar, equipment, and strings Hold, tune, and get situated with your guitar Play barre chords and strum to the rhythm Recognize the structure of a blues song Tackle musical riffs Master melodies and solos Make your guitar sing, cry, and wail Jam to any type of blues In addition to this must-have book, a bonus CD is included so that you can listen to famous songs, practice your riffs and chords, and develop your style as a blues musician. It also features a quick guide to musical notation and suggestions on albums, artists, and guitars for further enjoyment. With Blues Guitar for Dummies, you can re-create the masterpieces of the blues legend without the expensive lessons!

In this update of the Acoustic Guitar Answer Book, Sharon Isbin, the classical guitar virtuoso who heads the Juilliard School Guitar Department, answers 50 essential questions about performing, practicing, and choosing and caring for your guitar. The questions were asked by Acoustic Guitar magazine readers and answered by Isbin in four years of Master Class columns in the magazine. This book collects all this vital information together in an easy reference format - an absolute must for every classical guitar player. Includes new appendices of resources for classical guitarists and students. 88 pages, 9 inch. x 12 inch.

(Book). Every guitarist dreams of owning a handmade instrument, but for most, the cost is likely to be prohibitive. The alternative building your own fine guitar is not as difficult as you might imagine, given some skill, patience, and the expert guidance of a master luthier. Every step of construction is fully covered, from choice, selection, and preparation of woods, to consideration of size, bracing, and tonal qualities. Each step of the building sequence is clearly photographed in color, with variations to the standard design shown to enable you to personalize your instrument as you make it. Briston, England-based Jonathan Kinkead has been building guitars for nearly 30 years. His craft is born out of experience and intuition rather than a strict following of technical detail. The resulting beauty of form and distinctive tone have earned him his reputation as one of the world's most respected independent luthiers.

(Berklee Guide). Learn those beautiful hot licks and fingerpicking patterns of country music. You'll learn all about the various types of country music, from classic to current from Western Swing to bluegrass and everywhere between. Get beyond the cowboy chords to more complex arrangements, signature opening licks, and solos that characterize today's country hits. Online audio tracks illustrate these licks and concepts in context, and the book shows you exactly how to play them. You will learn how to play: Single and double-note lead style; Rhythm guitar styles; String bending, including single-, double-, and triple-note bends; Triadic pedal steel styles; Fingerpicking technique; Western swing style; Bluegrass lead and rhythm style; Sound effects, to make your guitar sound like a marimba, Theremin, banjo, and more!

The guitar is one of the most evocative instruments in the world. It features in music as diverse as heavy metal, blues, indie and flamenco, as well as Indian classical music, village music making in Papua New Guinea and carnival in Brazil. This cross-cultural popularity makes it a unique starting point for understanding social interaction and cultural identity. Guitar music can be sexy, soothing, melancholy or manic, but it nearly always brings people together and creates a common ground even if this common ground is often the site of intense social, cultural, economic and political negotiation and contest.This book explores how people use guitars and guitar music in various nations across the world as a musical and symbolic basis for creating identities. In a world where place and space are challenged by the pace of globalization, the guitar provides images, sounds and styles that help define new cultural territories. Guitars play a crucial part in shaping the commercial music industry, educational music programmes, and local community atmosphere. Live or recorded, guitar music and performance, collecting and manufacture sustains a network of varied social exchanges that constitute a distinct cultural milieu.Representing the first sustained analysis of what the guitar means to artists and audiences world-wide, this book demonstrates that this seemingly simple material artefact resonates with meaning as well as music.

The Americana Guitar Book introduces you to every essential technique that will enhance your musical palette on both acoustic and electric guitar... from Travis and Carter picking, to slide licks and raucous electric guitar work.