Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #171785 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 120 pages

Customer Reviews

Master Class From John
In this masterful book John Renbourn conveys a variety of styles and techniques utilised in finger picking guitar laid out in both notation and tablature. The pieces aren’t easy and are not for the beginner but for the enthusiastic player eager to discover a style of guitar playing which has its roots in the folk and blues revival of the early sixties. The title says it all – Folk Blues & Beyond, Celtic Melodies and The Jazz Tinge. The accompanying CDs are like having a master class in ones own room, each tune is played normally and then slowly with analysis and comment, – it’s so friendly. It’s good but it’s tough!

Definitely not for the beginner to play - but great to listen to
As other reviewers have said, this book/CD set (reissues of previous book/VHS releases) is definitely for the intermediate and advanced skills player. But, as is so often the way with guitar music, a beginner could easily listen to JR's playing and pick up a lot - especially for the Celtic music section.

As for contents - here's an outline:

Folk Blues and Beyond : White House Blues, Judy, Anji, Watch the Stars, Lord Franklin, My Sweet Potato, Abide with Me, and Great Dreams from Heaven

Celtic Melodies & Open Tunings : The South Wind, The Blarney Pilgrim, Bunyan's Hymn, I Saw Three Ships, The English Dance, Lament for Owen Roe O'Neill, Mist Covered Mountains of Home, The Orphan, Lindsey and Sandwood Down to Kyle

The Jazz Tinge : Buffalo, Transfusion, My Dear Boy, Little Niles and Cherry

INFURIATING OMISSION
Take it as read that this book has pages and pages of well notated finger style tunes, and the accompanying three CDs explain in detail how to approach these tunes. But there is one omission that makes navigating this wealth of material a tediously infuriating task - there is no track listing for any of the CDs. Yes, you read that right, there are three CDs with approximately 30 tracks each and no track listing to tell you what tunes you are listening to. You just have to hope that somewhere in the dialogue the performer mentions the name of the tune. Most of the time he is kind enough to do this, but some of the time he doesn't bother. It could have been sooooo simple to make this package perfect but now it's just annoying!