Musical Instruments

Reviews

I ordered this as a gift for my boyfriend. He has learned half the book already, even with his very limited music reading skills. There are chords, tabs, and sheet music for every song. Really really great book!

The book was ordered as a gift for my nephews and he loves it. It got there on time and everything.

Reviews

I purchased this as a Christmas gift for my 15 year old grandson. I was very impressed with the book for the price. Not knowing much about guitar, I can't comment for myself, but he is an intermediate player and loves it.

The arrangements in this book may be relatively easy, but they aren't very interesting and aren't much fun to play. I just got started with finger picking. A little more creative arrangements might be more difficult to learn, but the effort would seem worthwhile. These tunes reminded me of the songs you would find in the old Mel Bay beginning guitar series, arranged to throw in a few bass notes. I hoped to find easy listening Beatles tunes that would be entertaining. I was disappointed.

I am a beginner (3 months) at fingerstyle guitar. I think this is a fantastic book for someone who has learned some basic fingerstyle patterns. (For the first step in this direction, I recommend Mark Hanson's "Beyond Basics Fingerstyle" book.) As a first song to learn from this book, I recommend "Norwegian wood" (page 74) as it is the simplest - only 2 pages. I could learn this song in 3 days, and although I play it in a way that would make Lennon cringe, it is heartening to hear Beatles music being reproduced from my hands. The arrangements are beautiful in the way the melody and harmony lines are combined, which of course is what fingerstyle guitar is all about. The book has tabs and standard music notation, and a separate track for the melody line for each song. Unfortunately no CD is included - so you will have to play your Beatles songs as a reference.

Having a blast teaching myself "When I'm Sixty Four" from this book. I was afraid the arrangements would be tricky - ala Chet Atkins with a constant bass line. The arragnements in this book are great for the intermediate player, not too simple, not too complex. It's the toppermost of the poppermost!

This is an excellent book for those wanting to learn some finger picked Beatles songs. I'm finding most songs are quite accessible to the intermediate player, and are decent arrangements of the originals. Some may quibble about the faithfulness of the arrangements. Well, they ARE arrangements. I had one little complaint about the arrangement of Blackbird: it does not give you any clue to the way McCartney played it with the index finger strumming technique that gives this song its signature sound. In this respect, the arrangement is not faithful to the original, and if you hadn't seen other arrangements, you'd never know. Otherwise, as others have commented, this is a lot of fun, and easy enough that years of experience are not required, but challenging enough to let you impress at least some of your friends.

Reviews

This book of Taylor Swift songs was supposed to be "easy" guitar tabs. There's nothing easy about most of the guitar chords in this book. Certainly not for the beginner. Instead go online for free lyrics and guitar chords that anyone can play.