Basic Blues for Guitar: Book/CD Pack

Learn like the old blues guys learnt. Take your time learn a lot. I skipped the finger picking because I was first focusing on blues rock

I think the previous reviewers, taken all together, paint a largely accurate picture of the strong points and flaws of this book. On the plus side, in the space of 37 short examples, Sokolow provides a wealth of truly superb examples of different blues styles, while introducing the basics of the blues form (the 12-bar progression, the five pentatonic minor positions for lead, using the relative minor to create a major sound). However, for a beginning guitarist, the spike in difficulty is indeed precipitous, and for an intermediate-level electric guitarist with little experience playing acoustic style, nailing exercise #3 (a finger-picked country blues) would not be an easy task. As far as I can tell, this book is directed toward an advanced beginner or intermediate player, but no prior knowledge of the blues is assumed.With that summary out of the way, I'd like to add some pluses and minuses to this book that I haven't seen mentioned:Pluses:*Other reviewers focus on the blues leads (which are indeed very good), but the rhythm parts (which are transcribed as well) are also outstanding, build thoughtfully from one exercise to the next, and will provide a typical intermediate player with exciting new ideas for chord voicings and rhythmic patterns.*The rhythm and lead parts are stereophonically separated on the audio. This means it's easy to isolate the rhythm and lead parts in order to learn them, and it's also easy to give yourself 12 bars of backing track to improvise over.*It seems that in almost every lead part there's some classy and classic blues lick that any aspiring blues guitarist needs to know--how to use chromatic runs, bending patterns, double stops, etc.--pay careful attention and these tricks will enter your arsenal of blues licks.Minuses:*There's a lot present in the audio that's not included in the transcription (Sokolow admits as much on p. 7). An experienced guitarist will be able to figure out the tricks to how Sokolow gets the sounds he does, but it would have been nice if he notated these tricks more accurately in the tablature or discussed them in his text.*Speaking of which, Sokolow briefly mentions "choking" a string, but fails to mention anywhere in the text that, in general, your "chokes" won't sound right unless you bend to pitch. Again, an experienced guitarist would know this, but as this is supposed to be an introductory book to blues technique, it's rather strange that he doesn't mention this. There are plenty of similar gaps of instruction in the text when I felt a sentence or two could alleviate some confusion.*If you're trying to play along with the audio note-for-note, beware! It seems like in one out of every two or three songs, there is a major mistake in the tablature (the musical notation is somewhat more accurate). You'll need to listen, trust your ears, and correct (or ignore!) the tabs.*In practically every song, the tablature inexplicably contains rest symbols, when you need to hold the notes instead. This is very, very annoying if you're sight-reading. Again, the solution is to follow along with the more accurate musical notation (or a pen to mark through the superfluous rests in the tablature).*The way my copy of the book is bound means it doesn't open flat, and it's very hard to read the music near the binding. Also, some exercises, despite being only 12 measures long, require a page-turn to read all the music. This could have been (and arguably should have been) avoided.To me, the pluses of this book well outweigh the minuses, hence the four-star rating. The quality of the music, both the leads and rhythm parts, is what sets this book apart. But that's not to say that I wasn't frustrated at times while playing through the book due to the negatives mentioned above. And I can see where a beginning guitarist (unless she was very inspired to learn the blues and/or had a little help from a more experienced guitar-playing friend) would have a lot of trouble getting into this book.

This book is an overview of the dominant genres of blues. It is a good book to begin exploration into the many flavors of blues music. If you want to learn how Robert Johnson or Chuck Berry or Albert King played then this is the beginning. I absolutely disagree with other reviewers about the difficulty and material covered. It is truly a basic blues guitar book and it is not a music theory text nor is it an in-depth dissection of every blues style. It is a book on HOW not WHY. To blame the book for not explaining "why" music does what it does is unfair to the author. To say that it is too difficult insults the author and musicians; nobody cared what Muddy Waters was playing before he was an accomplished guitarist...see what I mean?

Got exactly what I ordered.!!!

Thorough and enjoyable. I've bought this book for many friends since my first purchase many years ago.

The accompanyng tracks are good, and those who like Sokolow's wonderful alternating bass thumb technique and fingerstyle, it's great.Kulu

In my opinion, this is a very good book to learn the blues from. It not only includes tab, but also the written music for those that prefer. The fact that the RHYTHM tab and music as well as the lead is included as well is a great plus. Alot of the newer books teaching blues have music examples that last about 5 to ten seconds long so that right when you start getting into a groove the sample is over. This book has more extended tracks that help me get a feel for the music. The fact that the author sent me mp3 downloads of the music due to the fact i had scratched my CD up so bad shows how much he cares about those that purchase his books. I cant say the same for other authors that have completely ignored my questions. .

Book is okay but it arrived with no CD. Navigating customer service process is more trouble than it’s worth. It would be great if I got the cd with the book because a book cd pack is not a book cd pack without the cd. It’s just a book at that point.Deeply disappointed with product and seller. I will update this review if the status changes soon.

Wenn man auf Blues steht und anfangen möchte, Gitarre zu spielen, dann ist das Buch optimal. Die ersten leichten Stücke sind so, wie es ein Cottonfield-Blues-Gitarrist auch gespielt hat. Es ist vielleicht nichts für kleine Kinder, aber so ab ca. 14 könnte es klappen. Voraussetzung ist sicherlich, dass man Blues hört.

Múltiples pistas sobre diferentes tipos de blues, con lead y rhythm guitar. También algo de southern, jazzy blues. Con standard notation y tabs para cada tema. Nivel intermedio, me falta un poco, o bastante :) No lo dudes si lo encuentras a un precio ajustado, que en amazon.es suele ser muchísimo mas caro que en amazon.uk, aunque no siempre.

I purchased this book for a few tips as I've played guitar for a while. It is well laid out and the exercises are good. If you have little knowledge of the guitar basics I would recommend you read the book front to back prior to starting out. This would help with termomnology and wording used in the book. I have already another Fred Sokolow teaching book and find this one just as good. Definetly a good place to start learning and check out all by same author.

I have other books written by Fred Sokolow and have always thought he is a good instructor. This is no exception and might even be his most comprehensive. I did read the other reviews and in the most part agree with what they have said. However there is plenty of instruction and descriptions of the techniques and in many ways it has cleared up a few questions for me. It's great to have both the rhythm and lead parts written down for you to practice which strives to make you a better all round guitarist. However I agree the tab has faults which you have to watch carefully or manually correct because there are rests all over the place that shouldn't be there as most are actually ties. 1 srar lost. No biggy though just look at the musical notation. I wish the fingerstyle section of the country blues had been a bit more comprehensive. However the other styles are much better developed. Audio sounds are great just as long as you play them in stereo and can pan the sounds from left to right. On a normal cd player the lead part will probably be lost. Sokolov is an accomplished player. This book doesn't hold back anything. It's all there for you to learn. I wouldn't agree that you have to be an intermediate player to learn from it. It's a process of development so just go with it. Chokes are an old fashioned or American way to describe string bends.

I like Fred Sokolows teaching method he explains things in a very easy to understand way