Rating: 
Summary: Begining Finger Style Blues
Review: I've been attempting to play acoustic style BLUES guitar for about a good year now. Iv`e always looked up too ROERT JOHSON,BIG JOE WILLIAMS,BLIND BLAKE ECT... .It was frustrating some times (and still is) because I really had no guidance .Then I came across this most helpful book it really helps develop fingering picking skills you thought you were probally never capable of .It will teach you awsome skills like using chord progressions with melody notes and alternating baselines.I recomend it for the serious BLUES enthusist.
Rating:
Summary: Great for Beginners!
Review: I've been taking blues guitar lessons for about six months now and, I guess like most beginners, trying to absorb all of the information that I can on the subject. This book has made an incredible impact on my ability to play fingerstyle. I have no previous knowledge of playing fingerstyle and always thought it something that only extremely dedicated students could master. In just a couple months of playing the lessons in the book I'm already playing basic twelve bar blues that I would never have believed I could play. The book is very informative and has good easy beginning structure that leads to some rather complicated techniques. I think the best part is how everything builds upon itself to get you playing more difficult pieces. Even still, it does take discipline and practice (lots of practice) to play a piece correctly. If you are the type of person who can sit down and read and not afraid of repetition you can definitely play pieces you never thought possible. The cd is an indispensible tool to getting what you are trying to play into your head. A great book to learn by.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent fingerstyle book!
Review: If you are interested in fingerstyle guitar like I am then this book is excellent for helping you to gain independence between your thumb and the other fingers in a rapid manner. The book is set out in very logical fashion and has useful exercises and songs that progress in difficulty in a very intelligent way. The songs are more of the very old style county blues (not what I anticipated). However, it is an excellent fingerstyle guide that I highly recommend to any beginning fingerstylist.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent content, and excellent teaching
Review: If you're looking for a book that will teach you the basics (and then some) of fingerstyle blues technique, then consider this offering from Berle & Galbo very carefully. From the moment you begin reading (and listening to the accompanying CD) you immediately get the impression that the authors thoroughly enjoy what they do, and this shines through in the quality of their work. The book starts out pretty easy with some basic chord progressions and moves fairly quickly into melody notes, inversions, syncopations, "vamping", and closes with 5 excellent pieces including a simplified version of the "32-20 Blues" by Robert Johnson.The CD is very good but to play Devil's Advocate: 1. The guy rambles a little too much for my liking and I was totally lost when I first heard the CD.
2. Matching the exercises with the CD tracks could have been done better rather than using an index at the back of the book.
3. The recorded examples do not match the tablature for some of the more complex songs (I think the guy playing liked to improvise a little). I should add that these are just minor complaints and are not significant enough to warrant any demotion from 5-stars. This is not a book for the complete beginner, as there is quite a deal of assumed knowledge. If you fall into the category of complete beginner come back to this book after a couple of months practice/lessons.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent content, and excellent teaching
Review: If you're looking for a book that will teach you the basics (and then some) of fingerstyle blues technique, then consider this offering from Berle & Galbo very carefully. From the moment you begin reading (and listening to the accompanying CD) you immediately get the impression that the authors thoroughly enjoy what they do, and this shines through in the quality of their work. The book starts out pretty easy with some basic chord progressions and moves fairly quickly into melody notes, inversions, syncopations, "vamping", and closes with 5 excellent pieces including a simplified version of the "32-20 Blues" by Robert Johnson. The CD is very good but to play Devil's Advocate: 1. The guy rambles a little too much for my liking and I was totally lost when I first heard the CD.
2. Matching the exercises with the CD tracks could have been done better rather than using an index at the back of the book.
3. The recorded examples do not match the tablature for some of the more complex songs (I think the guy playing liked to improvise a little). I should add that these are just minor complaints and are not significant enough to warrant any demotion from 5-stars. This is not a book for the complete beginner, as there is quite a deal of assumed knowledge. If you fall into the category of complete beginner come back to this book after a couple of months practice/lessons.
Rating:
Summary: This book is AWESOME
Review: Just to expand a little on what previous reviewes have said, this is an excellant book! I purchased it based upon some reviews at acousticguitar.com and am totally satisfied.
I just received it and listed to parts of the CD. The book really holds your hand, so to speak, and builds on some excercises to get you up to speed in no time at all. You learn some fingerpicking arpeggios in the blues style, and in 10 pages they have you fingerpicking some cool blues rhythm.
I have not gone too far with this book, but if you KNOW the BASICS (E chord, A chord, D chord, yada yada) you can really learn the basics. Just follow the well defined instructions. You can't go wrong with this book. I would definetly suggest listening to some CD's from some other Blues artists like Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. Get the feel for the music and you can get in the groove.
Rating:
Summary: This book is AWESOME
Review: Just to expand a little on what previous reviewes have said, this is an excellant book! I purchased it based upon some reviews at acousticguitar.com and am totally satisfied.
I just received it and listed to parts of the CD. The book really holds your hand, so to speak, and builds on some excercises to get you up to speed in no time at all. You learn some fingerpicking arpeggios in the blues style, and in 10 pages they have you fingerpicking some cool blues rhythm.
I have not gone too far with this book, but if you KNOW the BASICS (E chord, A chord, D chord, yada yada) you can really learn the basics. Just follow the well defined instructions. You can't go wrong with this book. I would definetly suggest listening to some CD's from some other Blues artists like Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. Get the feel for the music and you can get in the groove.
Rating:
Summary: A great book for traditional blues development
Review: Mark Galbo and Arnie Berle have put together a wonderful book here. An absolute must for anyone wishing to delve into acoustic blues. The exercises allow the guitarist to develop the foundation necessary to learn traditional blues styles. The full-song examples in the back of the book are well-rounded, from Robert Johnson's "32-20 Blues" to a wonderful John Cephas tune, "Black Cat Swing." This is one of the first blues books I bought. I now have a small fortune in blues sheet music and instructional material, yet I still deem this book to be right up there among the very best of the lot.
Rating:
Summary: FINGERPICKING BLUES
Review: The author of this book really wanted his readers to learn blues with class. This is fingerpicking treated with respect to music and to the reader. The CD is excellent and helps you a great deal in developing the sense of rhythm and style needed to play blues. You'll feel a great deal of satisfaction when you listen to yourself playing these great melodies with your own guitar. Get this book, study it slowly, enjoy every exercise and you'll soon be able to sit near a crossroads bluesing with classic style. Experience the fingerpicking style....
Rating: 
Summary: Uneven but very valuable
Review: This book and CD has its ups and downs. The CD, for one thing, is a problem. The guy rambles and rambles and rambles, and the content on the CD is poorly indexed to the book. The content of both the book and the CD also tend to zoom from simple to quite difficult, back to simple, and so on. But in spite of these not inconsiderable flaws, I knew within an hour that I really liked the book anyway. I have picked up lots of good ideas. The book would be good for raw beginners through fairly experienced intermediates. Beginners should understand that fingerpicking is like learning to ride a bike; you're going to fall down and skin your knees quite a few times before you manage to ride even to the end of the block. I think this book does a good job of explaining that, and giving beginners tips on how to get started. Intermediates will find lots of really cool, fun stuff to play. The songs at the end of the book (five complete songs) are the icing on the cake, because by then you've already learned lots of other good stuff. The style of the music ranges from shuffles to "sweet" blues like John Hurt stuff, and some "harder" or "meaner" blues. Overall, a very good mix of the music. You can tell that the guy picking the music knows his stuff and understands that he has to present a solid balance, a good sampling of fingerstyle blues. That's sadly lacking in some books. And intermediates should also note that there is, in my opinion, some VERY challenging stuff here for them. Well, I suppose that an advanced player wouldn't think so, but an advanced player wouldn't buy this book. There are some pieces here that will stretch your fingers, give your wrist a workout, and force you to learn some difficult maneuvers. And that's good! So the book won't just give you lots of "treading water" music that won't take you anywhere. If you're an intermediate, you'll pick up some things that start moving you along to the advanced level. One other positive point--there is a LOT of music in this book. Some books seem like they end no sooner than they get started. Not this one. Admittedly, there is a fair amount of material in the middle of the book that is kind of repetitive, but the point is to start simple, then go a little more complex, and then a little more, and so on. So I don't fault the author for that. It's better than going from an extremely simple picking pattern straight into a heavily-syncopated pattern that leaves the beginner bewildered. Just be prepared to deal with the endlessly rambling monologue on the CD, and be prepared to skip through the book and the CD to find what you want.
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