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The flatpicked guitar reviews database is here to help educate people before they purchase an instrument. Of course, this is not meant to be a substitute for playing the instrument yourself!
161 reviews in the archive.
Where Purchased: Amazon Buyer
I'd heard plenty of good things about the PLP series and was very familiar with Steve K through the web, through a few tracks on CDs over the years, and the pages of FGM magazine. When I saw this volume come up in the UK at a very reasonable price I thought I'd take the plunge.
What you get is a big old book - nice and clear text and tab for us short-sighted old-timers, and six CDs. Yep, six. The book pretty much just gives the tab for the tunes, and the CDs cover full speed performance of each track along with broken down and slowed down versions, with Steve talking through the pieces with particular emphasis on the problem and unusual areas. It's a real great way of covering the material - you can work through at your own pace using just the book and listen to Steve K as and when you need to understand a particular intricacy. For each song there are three versions - simple, intermediate, and advanced, along with some suggested endings. The simple versions are... simple. But they also sound great. I'd have no hesitation in playing these versions of the tunes as my break in these songs in jam sessions. The intermediate versions are a little more interesting and dfficult, as you'd expect. And the advanced versions take it all a step forward. But the great thing is, you can learn the basic version and then just a phrase or two from the intermediate (or advanced version) and thus slowly build up your own unique arrangement (maybe even add in some phrases from other sources), or work up to the advanced one a step at a time.
Steve K has a whole host of these books out covering scores of songs - I think there's a swing version, too. Volume 1 was the set I wanted on account of several songs that I've been working on are in here, as are several more that I want to learn. The 'setlist' is:
Ragtime Annie
Bill Cheatham
Goldrush
Flop Eared Mule
Forked Deer
Old Joe Clark
Soldier's Joy
Nothin To It
Red Haired Boy
Big Sandy River
Billy In The Low Ground
Under The Double Eagle
Fisher's Hornpipe
Blackberry Blossom
Turkey In The Straw
St Annes Reel
Arkansas Traveller
Sweet Georgia Brown
Whiskey Before Breakfast
Phew! The performance versions are wonderful. There's this moment of frission you get when listening to them when Steve plays something particularly great - you think "I've got the tab for that! I 'm in with a shout...." But of course it ain't that easy. Hearing it played, being giving the notes and instruction, is the easy bit. Learning it is the hard bit. If you're like me you're going to have to start off slow, and take it very steady!
There's no actual guitar instruction here. It's not about teaching you crosspicking (though there's plenty of it in the arrangements) or hammer-ons or how to keep a relaxed right hand or any other technical information - it's purely about learning these songs. Also there's no hints or information around why Steve chose (in the intermediate and advanced versions) the notes he chose. I'm a geek when it comes to understanding why someone chooses the notes they do - and that's why there's one star missing in the score. I'd love to understand how someone like Steve K would approach this stuff, not just when composing these different versions, but maybe in improvising upon them too. But that's not the intent to it's probably a little tight of me to knock off a point.
My other issue is nothing to do with the book and everything to do with memory. There's a lot of stuff in this set. I've already learned and forgotten several arrangements of several tunes. I'm not sure I'll ever keep it all my head at the same time.
Great stuff. Highly recommended for players of all levels.
Overall Rating: 9
Where Purchased: On Line from DjangoBooks.com
Like most guitar players I've bought an awful lot of instruction material over the years and probably 95% of it lies gathering dust in a drawer or on a shelf somewhere. But every now and then one stumbles across a gem that becomes a truly well-worn and deserving friend.
Michael Horowitz's Gypsy Picking is one such book. I've long loved the gypsy jazz style, not just Django, but Stochelo Rosenberg, Romane, Gary Potter, Jimmy Rosenberg, Birili, etc etc My early attempts to play in this style floundered (and also foundered) terribly.
Then I heard mention of this book.
It's a slimish book (with a CD of all the patterns and exercises) - just 60 or so pages - and on a first glance it appears to be quite simple. When I saw that a whole section - some 15 pages or so - was devoted to playing patterns on open strings (i.e. the right hand only) I thought what's going on?!
But there's the rub. I'm a massive believer that the right hand (or should I say the picking hand) is *the* most important hand in this art of ours. As I read what Michael had to say, and as I applied myself to this style of picking, as I set a metronome going nice and slowly and started to really try and nail these patterns I suddenly started to get a bit of that Django sound. It felt good. It felt great. Sometimes going back to basics is just what we need.
Then... when I moved onto the next section and started to add the left hand patterns onto what my right hand was already doing the scales really did fall from my eyes and appear beneath my fingers. There was the sound and - unbelievably - I found very quickly that I could play some of these patterns far faster than I'd be able to using my normal picking style. It suddenly became clear why the Manouche players play this way.
There are limitations. This style of picking originated because of the need to project an unamplified guitar above the raucous crowds of Parisian nightclubs back in the day. It's not necessarily so required now. Playing runs up the neck works far more efficiently than coming down the neck. But it's all part of the style.
So having learned some basic patterns you then get to apply some cracking licks and scales and arpeggios to these patterns and have a whole lot of fun in the process.
There's a five chorus Django solo to learn and examine and break down. It's covered at a nice easy pace, and although Michael doesn't overtly mention this (maybe for copyright reasons) it is an actual Django solo from his Minor Blues recording. Django's version is far faster than Michael's version - something to aspire to!
There are recommendations of other recordings and artists to listen to and masses of other information and advice tucked away throughout the book.
I'm still a million miles from being able to improvise efficiently over songs like Minor Swing and Dark Eyes - but it's not because of the picking style and it's not because of any deficiences in this book - it's simply a very demanding style that requires constant attention.
Bottom line is that this is one of the few books I've read and applied and learned from cover to cover, I use the styles and techniques and licks in all my playing from time to time, and as a primer before moving on to other books and material in the style there is none better.
Overall Rating: 10
Where Purchased: Local Music Shop
I bought Arlen Roth's Nashville Guitar book way back in 1977. Over the last 30+ years it's probably been my most used tuition book - and is part of an elite club of books that I've read and learned from cover to cover.
It's quite a comprehensive book - almost 150 pages - and came with a flexi-disc. I no longer have a turntable, but a very kind soul on another forum sent me a CD of the material on the flexidisc and it's been a joy to hear the examples again after all these years.
The book covers a lot of material:
Rhythm playing
Carter style playing
Travis Picking
Basic country lead guitar
Bluegrass
Rockabilly
Double note runs
Nashville String Bending techniques
I'm not 100% sure, but I've been told that the final chapter on Nashville String Bending helped revolutionise country guitar picking. Certainly the sounds Arlen coaxes out of a Telecaster with no help from a B-Bender is amazing.
I recall being blown away by the Sam McGee and Merle Travis fingerpicking sections back when I first got this book. How one person could coax such sounds out of a single guitar amazed and delighted me. Still does.
The country licks and scales informed my playing for years. Still do.
The bluegrass section is full of great licks in the G,C and D positions, and the exercise solos that Arlen has written usually contain one or two amazing and useful little twists and turns. I learned all of this stuff several times over (I have a terrible memory) and still go back to it weekly.
There's a beautiful arrangement of Wildwood Flower in the Maybelle Carter style and there's a whole bunch of Clarence White solos transcribed. It's only recently - since I've got hold of more of Clarence's material - that I've been able to match these transcriptions to the originals. But they are - despite it not actually saying so - very close transcriptions of sections of Listen To The Mockingbird, I Am A Pilgrim, and John Henry.
There are Doc Watson and Alton Delmore solos transcribed, too.
Much of the material in the book isn't on the CD/flexidisc. Back then space was at a premium - and there's one particularly hot solo that is on the recording but not in the book. Nevertheless, by the time you've worked through this material you'll be able to pick up such stuff anyway.
The rockabilly section is a bit lightweight and very basic (although the classic Workingman's Blues lick is included and that's always welcome!) but that aside, it's simply a gold mine.
I've seen other, more modern country guitar books, but none have touched me or inspired me the way this one has. I believe it's still available, certainly there are used copies out there. You have to work a little harder with older books like this than maybe you do with modern DVDs and books that have every sound file on the CD, but it's well worth it.
A classic of guitar tuition literature.
Overall Rating: 10
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