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Review #31: Understanding DADGAD by Doug Young

May 14, 2026 by joemcmurray Leave a Comment

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Is this one of the best or worst method or repertoire books for learning to play acoustic fingerstyle blues guitar?

You can learn to play music using a variety of resources including teachers, online resources, and books.

Understanding DADGAD for Fingerstyle Guitar is a method book for… learning to play fingerstyle guitar using the wonderous alternate tuning known as DADGAD tuning. This tuning is often associated with Celtic fingerstyle (Pierre Bensusan and Tony McManus), the British folk revival of the 1960s (Davy Graham), and modern fingerstyle (Andy McKee), but it truly excels in any genre.

So, if you have some fingerstyle or classical guitar experience and you have an interest in beginning to utilize DADGAD tuning, this book will provide a comprehensive introduction. Be aware, it is appropriate for intermediate to advanced fingerstyle guitarists. Do not try to work through this book if you are just starting out with acoustic fingerstyle guitar – you really need to have the basics down before starting in this book.

Understanding DADGAD covers a lot of ground with regards to this alternate tuning, starting out by showing you simple chords, the basics of fretboard navigation, a few easier arrangements, and some accessible ideas for improvisation. The book provides useful insights into how to leverage your knowledge of standard tuning to facilitate your learning of DADGAD – your 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th strings are tuned the same as in standard tuning, while your 1^st, 2^nd, and 6^th strings are tuned exactly one whole step down. The book also does a great job introducing you to many of DADGAD’s unique characteristics – the tuning is especially well-suited to the harp-like cross-string technique, the use of drones, and the use of octaves paired with hammer-ons, pull-offs, and slides.

Where the book falls a little flat is that it doesn’t effectively show you how to arrange a tune in DADGAD tuning. Upon completion of the book, you may have a few cool DADGAD tunes that you can play, but you may not know how to apply your newly acquired familiarity with the tuning to other music. Personally, I am always arranging tunes for fingerstyle guitar, and while some tunes work great in standard tuning or drop-D, others seem to shine in DADGAD. I recently arranged the Guns ‘N Roses hit, “Sweet Child of Mine,” to beef up my set-list for bars and breweries, and I started out arranging the tune in standard tuning. It wasn’t sitting right in the original key, so I transposed it a couple times, but still didn’t like the results. Finally, I arranged it in DADGAD and voila, the result was lush, musically satisfying, and playable/performable. Here’s a sample of that arrangement.

My recommendation is that all fingerstyle players learn to arrange tunes in standard tuning, drop-D, and DADGAD. While Understanding DADGAD doesn’t cover this topic, it does give you lots of tools (intervals, cross-string technique, etc.) to use in any future DADGAD arranging. In my eBook, Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar, I show you how to arrange Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star in multiple keys in standard and alternate tunings (including DADGAD). You can also check out my video/podcast series: Arranging Melodies for Fingerstyle Guitar, in which I show you how to arrange examples from the Essential Elements Guitar Method. I’ll put a link to these videos in the corner and in the show description.

A nice supplement to Understanding DADGAD would be another book from our author: A DADGAD Christmas, again, also by Doug Young. This other book contains great DADGAD arrangements of Christmas carols that you can both play and analyze to gain arranging insights.

Understanding DADGAD provides both treble clef and tablature for each arrangement. Unfortunately, no fingerings are provided in the music. For each example, I notated my own fingering in the music, after which I was able to play much more smoothly, accurately, and confidently. The skill of choosing sensible fingering is important, and you will need to look elsewhere to further develop this skill.

Recordings are available online through Mel Bay’s website. These will be very helpful to many readers.

My own books:

Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar: go to http://joemcmurray.com/checkout/ to purchase a pdf of my eBook. Learning to arrange melodies will also help your fingerstyle songwriting and your understanding of the inner workings of fingerstyle guitar.

Fingerstyle Blues Guitar: An In-Depth Study of the 12-Bar Blues in E Major – Books 1 and 2 are available in paperback or as an eBook through Amazon [https://a.co/d/g7Udsso (Book 1) and https://a.co/d/aDbh4H0 (Book 2)]. The first priority of these books is to quickly get you playing a solo instrumental 12-bar blues, and then to build on it until you can freely improvise or “jam.” You should be up and running by the end of the third chapter, and each following chapter will add icing on the cake. There is an focus on using a monotonic bass to maximize melodic freedom, and there is an emphasis on creating lyrical melodies using actual lyrics.

My upcoming book, Arranging for Fingerstyle Ukulele, will be published by Mel Bay in 2026.

My music is available on all streaming platforms at https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dcokTG6C598OhTslHH5uo?si=hrQb7FViSZewDRSgECw9Ew:

Pins on the Map: my third fingerstyle guitar album was released on January 19, 2024. Watch the first single, “Open Road,” on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/uPBh8sZQsT4?si=EM_wAwnHFqU1VC9C.

Riding the Wave and Acoustic Oasis: my first two fingerstyle guitar albums.

Fingerstyle Progress Through General Guitar Method Books

March 24, 2026 by joemcmurray Leave a Comment

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General guitar method books are intended to guide beginner players through a comprehensive study of technique, reading standard notation, playing basic chords, etc. However, they can provide a very useful platform for acoustic fingerstyle practice if you know how to use them! Today we’ll take a look at two widely used guitar method books that are closely related:

Essential Elements for Guitar: Comprehensive Guitar Method (Will Schmid and Bob Morris), and
Hal Leonard’s Guitar Method Book 1 (Will Schmid and Greg Koch)

For years, I used the Hal Leonard Guitar Method with my kid students, but at some point, I came across the Essential Elements book (which is also published by Hal Leonard). This book shares Will Schmid as an author, and most of the treble clef exercises and melodies are exactly the same, but there are a bunch of extra tunes mixed in to give students more chordal practice. Other than about $3 in price difference, there is really no reason to ever buy the Hal Leonard Guitar Method.

These books do have value to beginner players who just picked up a guitar and have no idea where to start. You can’t go wrong working through a general method book, especially with a teacher who can ensure that you are developing the proper technique, who can introduce appropriate supplemental repertoire, etc. However, if you are trying to teach yourself to play guitar, a general method book will certainly get your farther than watching random YouTube videos. A book like this will guide you from point A to point B in a linear, sensible course of study, whereas YouTube videos tend to jump around from topic to topic according to YouTube’s algorithm rather than your best interest as an aspiring guitarist.

Now, I almost never work with adult students straight through a book like this, as many of them already have some experience and have somewhat clear musical goals that may be better served with a more focused book. For example, there are fingerstyle method books for my fingerstyle students, there are classical method books for my classical students, and so on.

However, having spent over a decade teaching kids out of these books, I have found that many of these melodies make great platforms for fingerstyle guitar! In a typical guitar lesson, a teacher may ask their student to perform a melody from the book. The teacher will generally either watch and listen closely or they will provide some sort of accompaniment – that is,

They will play the melody in unison with the student to help guide them,
They’ll play a harmony that is written out in the book, or
They’ll strum the chords.

Over the years I started accompanying my students with solo fingerstyle versions of the tunes to provide both their melody and the underlying harmony. This has proven to be helpful to my students, challenging and satisfying for myself, and fun for all.

I’m planning to do a series of videos breaking down how I create these little arrangements. My process has been codified in my book Arranging for Fingerstyle, which is available as an eBook which you can purchase through the link in the show description below. However, for this first video, I’ll just give you a sample of how I transform some of the exercises.

My own books:

My upcoming book, Arranging for Fingerstyle Ukulele, will be published by Mel Bay in 2026.

My music is available on all streaming platforms at https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dcokTG6C598OhTslHH5uo?si=hrQb7FViSZewDRSgECw9Ew:

Pins on the Map: my third fingerstyle guitar album was released on January 19, 2024. Watch the first single, “Open Road,” on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/uPBh8sZQsT4?si=EM_wAwnHFqU1VC9C.

Riding the Wave and Acoustic Oasis: my first two fingerstyle guitar albums.

Review #29: 12-Bar Fingerstyle Blues by Dave Rubin

February 12, 2026 by joemcmurray Leave a Comment

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Is this one of the best or worst method or repertoire books for learning to play acoustic fingerstyle blues guitar?

You can learn to play music using a variety of resources including teachers, online resources, and books.

12-Bar Fingerstyle Blues by Dave Rubin is another great repertoire book full of 12-bar blues choruses. I loved the author’s other book, Solo Blues Guitar, and now I recommend this one as well – these fun arrangements inspire me to improvise in new ways with new grooves. However, unlike the arrangements of his other book, these arrangements all need to be played without a plectrum. This book has some tunes that late-beginner fingerstyle players could handle, but the book is most appropriate for intermediate players.

The tunes in 12-Bar Fingerstyle Blues contain more repetitive grooves than some of the other fingerstyle blues method books on the market. Fewer lyrical phrases in the melodies. Whether that’s what you’re looking for is up to you. However, I find that these pieces present some great grooves that you can use as the foundation for your own variations and improvisation.

To really get the most out of the book, you will want to:

Learn an example as written,
Understand and internalize the groove – the shuffle, chord stabs, etc.
Create your own melodic variations and improvisations while maintaining the original groove.

By treating each short 12-bar tune as a seed or template for your own creativity, you can really milk these ideas and extend them into longer performances.

This book presents a lot of great 12-bar choruses from various subgenres. For experienced players, it is very fast to go through the entire book. Because each tune is a 12-bar chorus, you get a lot of ideas that you can digest, combine, and make into your own in the future. This book is simple and effective if you know how to use it.

I appreciate the chronological organization of this book, which separates tunes out into subgenres including Delta and Southern Country Blues (the longest section), Ragtime Blues, Piedmont Blues, Prewar Chicago Blues, Texas Blues, Postwar Chicago Blues, and Modern American Solo Steel-String Blues. Unfortunately, the tunes don’t really follow a clear difficulty progression. Within each section, multiple keys signatures and grooves are presented, and some happen to be a bit harder than others.

At the beginning of each subgenre, the author presents some cool history and key players to listen to. I try to set aside time within my practice sessions to listen to lots of recordings of these players. Personally, I listen on Spotify. This listening is time well spent as it attunes me to the sounds and feel that I should aiming for as I play the tunes.

12-Bar Fingerstyle Blues provides both treble clef and tablature for each arrangement. Unfortunately, no fingering is provided in the music. For each example, I notated my own fingering in the music, after which I was able to play much more smoothly, accurately, and confidently. The skill of choosing sensible fingering is important, and you will need to look elsewhere to further develop this skill.

Recordings are available online through Hal Leonard’s website. These will be very helpful to many readers. As with Solo Blues Guitar, the recordings were done by Doug Boduch, the author of Hal Leonard’s Fingerpicking Guitar, which I reviewed in Review #17.

My own books:

My upcoming book, Arranging for Fingerstyle Ukulele, will be published by Mel Bay in 2026.

My music is available on all streaming platforms at https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dcokTG6C598OhTslHH5uo?si=hrQb7FViSZewDRSgECw9Ew:

Pins on the Map: my third fingerstyle guitar album was released on January 19, 2024. Watch the first single, “Open Road,” on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/uPBh8sZQsT4?si=EM_wAwnHFqU1VC9C.

Riding the Wave and Acoustic Oasis: my first two fingerstyle guitar albums.

Review #28: Solo Blues Guitar by Dave Rubin

February 6, 2026 by joemcmurray Leave a Comment

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Is this one of the best or worst method or repertoire books for learning to play acoustic fingerstyle blues guitar?

You can learn to play music using a variety of resources including teachers, online resources, and books.

Solo Blues Guitar by Dave Rubin is different from any other book that I’ve reviewed thus far in that it is not a fingerstyle guitar book. The examples can be played fingerstyle, but most seem to work best with a plectrum/pick/flatpick. However, I want to review this book for a couple reasons:

It is focused on solo blues guitar arrangements
I LOVE this book. These examples are fun and they inspire me to improvise in new ways with new grooves.

Solo Blues Guitar by Dave Rubin is a repertoire book for learning to play, well… solo blues guitar! With a plectrum. This book is suitable for intermediate players who already have some knowledge of the blues and how to improvise. Each example provides a groove that intersperses melody and lead lines. To really get the most out of the book, you will want to:

Learn an example as written,
Understand the rhythm guitar groove – the shuffle, chord stabs, etc.
Insert your own melodies and improvisation while continuing to hold down the original rhythm guitar groove.
You can try creating variations to the original groove as well.

Other than a half-page introduction, there is no text in this book. Only full 12 or 16-bar blues examples:

(35) 12-bar, single-chorus examples in the keys of E, A, G, and D,
(15) 12-bar, two-chorus, slow blues examples in the keys of E, G, and A, and
(5) 16-bar examples with non-standard chord progressions in the key of A.

Solo Blues Guitar provides both treble clef and tablature for each arrangement. Unfortunately, no fingering is provided in the music. For each example, I notated my own fingering in the music, after which I was able to play much more smoothly, accurately, and confidently. The skill of choosing sensible fingering is important, and you will need to look elsewhere to further develop this skill.

Recordings are available online through Hal Leonard’s website. These will be very helpful to many readers. Interestingly, the recordings were done by Doug Boduch, the author of Hal Leonard’s Fingerpicking Guitar, which I reviewed in Review #17.

My own books:

My upcoming book, Arranging for Fingerstyle Ukulele, will be published by Mel Bay in 2026.

My music is available on all streaming platforms at https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dcokTG6C598OhTslHH5uo?si=hrQb7FViSZewDRSgECw9Ew:

Pins on the Map: my third fingerstyle guitar album was released on January 19, 2024. Watch the first single, “Open Road,” on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/uPBh8sZQsT4?si=EM_wAwnHFqU1VC9C.

Riding the Wave and Acoustic Oasis: my first two fingerstyle guitar albums.

Review #27: Roots and Blues Fingerstyle Guitar Explorations by Steve James

January 27, 2026 by joemcmurray Leave a Comment

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Is this one of the best or worst method or repertoire books for learning to play acoustic fingerstyle blues guitar?

You can learn to play music using a variety of resources including teachers, online resources, and books.

Roots and Blues Fingerstyle Guitar Explorations by Steve James is a hybrid repertoire/method book for learning to play fingerstyle and bottleneck blues. This book is suitable for late beginner to advanced fingerstyle players but is best for intermediate players. I would definitely not recommend this book for complete beginners – it starts out too hard for inexperienced fingerstyle players. The book offers some technical advice as well as fun historical anecdotes and quotes.

There are a bunch of fingerstyle blues books on the market, and I would generally not recommend this book over some of the others. On the positive side of things, this book excels in its material focused on open tunings and bottleneck slide. If you watch the included videos, you’ll see that the author is an incredible bottleneck slide player, and that is reflected in these chapters. On the other hand, I do not like multiple things about this book.

The difficulty progression isn’t very smooth – the book starts out with some difficult (late beginner/intermediate) tunes, and then the difficulty varies from tune to tune. Part of this is because the open tuning arrangements (starting in the middle of the book) are a bit easier to play.
There aren’t a lot of exercises. There are some, but this is more of a repertoire book with analysis and technical advice in the text.
I’m not a fan of the way that Acoustic Guitar Magazine lays out their books. They don’t integrate their text and playing examples. Instead of text that prepares you for an example, then the example, then more text, then the next example, etc., they usually have the text in a big block, and that text will refer you to the examples which are together in another block. It requires more jumping back and forth for the reader. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s not my favorite.

Late-beginner fingerstyle players could utilize Roots and Blues Fingerstyle Guitar Explorations as a supplement to a traditional method book:

A general fingerstyle method like Alfred’s “Beginning Fingerstyle Guitar,” or
A more focused method like Bruce Emery’s “Travis-Style Guitar from Scratch.”

Roots and Blues Fingerstyle Guitar Explorations provides both treble clef and tablature for each arrangement. Neither fretting nor picking hand fingering is provided in the music, but it is sometimes mentioned in the separate text. You can usually tell which notes should be played with your thumb by looking at the treble clef – bass notes generally have down stems. Regardless, the skill of choosing sensible fingering is important, and you will need to look elsewhere to further develop this skill.

Videos demonstrating the examples are available online. These are great. For me, it was especially helpful while working through the bottleneck slide chapter.

Produced by String Letter Media in association with the Acoustic Guitar Magazine.

My own books:

My upcoming book, Arranging for Fingerstyle Ukulele, will be published by Mel Bay in 2026.

My music is available on all streaming platforms at https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dcokTG6C598OhTslHH5uo?si=hrQb7FViSZewDRSgECw9Ew:

Pins on the Map: my third fingerstyle guitar album was released on January 19, 2024. Watch the first single, “Open Road,” on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/uPBh8sZQsT4?si=EM_wAwnHFqU1VC9C.Riding the Wave and Acoustic Oasis: my first two fingerstyle guitar albums.

Review #26: The Complete Acoustic Blues Guitar Method by Woody Mann

January 1, 2026 by joemcmurray Leave a Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:46 — 34.1MB) | Embed

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Is this one of the best or worst method or repertoire books for learning to play acoustic fingerstyle blues guitar?

You can learn to play music using a variety of resources including teachers, online resources, and books.

Despite the book’s title, this is not a traditional method book for learning to play fingerstyle blues guitar. This is a repertoire book containing fingerstyle blues arrangements in a variety of subgenres (i.e. ragtime and delta blues). The book does offer more than a traditional repertoire book in that it has technical and historical notes before each tune, and then it occasionally introduces a new technique through a tune. This book is suitable for late beginner to advanced fingerstyle players but is best for intermediate players. I really like the organization of the book: tunes are organized by subgenre, and within each section the tunes are arranged from easiest to hardest.

If you have zero experience playing fingerstyle guitar or fingerstyle blues, this is not the best book to start with. If you do have some experience, this is a great book for learning fun tunes, improving your skills, and learning some background history.

What stands out about this book is that some tunes include multiple choruses. If you’ve studied fingerstyle blues from books, you’ve seen one or two page arrangements that, as written, are too short for a full performance. You might have gathered that you should play the original arrangement and then create multiple variations to instrumentally simulate different lyrics for each verse of a vocal tune, to extend your performance, and to make it your own. However, most books don’t actually write out any variations. The Complete Acoustic Blues Guitar Method is wonderful in that some of its arrangements do contain 2^nd and 3^rd chorus variations. These are great for beginners and players that just want to play a tune that lasts more than 30 seconds, and they are even more valuable for players that want to see and study concrete examples of variations. You can learn a lot from analyzing these variations and then you can implement these ideas into other tunes in your repertoire.

Difficulty ramps up quickly in this book with the majority of the arrangements in that intermediate difficulty range. Beginner players may want to first use a traditional method book:

A general fingerstyle method like Alfred’s “Beginning Fingerstyle Guitar,” or
A more focused method like Bruce Emery’s “Travis-Style Guitar from Scratch.”

Then you could utilize Woody Mann’s book as a supplement as you’re working through the method book. Later beginners should aim for the first tune or two from each different section and see what specific styles of fingerstyle blues catch their ear. You will improve faster and have more fun if you play tunes that are aren’t too difficult, so don’t get bogged down with the hardest tunes in the book.

The Complete Acoustic Blues Guitar Method provides both treble clef and tablature for each arrangement, but neither fretting nor picking hand fingering is provided. At least you can tell which notes should be played with your thumb by looking at the treble clef – bass notes have down stems. Regardless, the skill of choosing sensible fingering is important, and you will need to look elsewhere to further develop this skill.

Recordings are available online through Hal Leonard’s website. These will be very helpful to many readers. It’s fun and educational to hear some of the author’s little variations and stylistic techniques (slides, bends, etc.) that aren’t written into the music.

The book doesn’t use the modern percussive techniques used by modern players like Michael Hedges, Don Ross, Andy McKee, Mike Dawes, etc. No thumb slaps, guitar body percussion, or tapping.

My own books:

My upcoming book, Arranging for Fingerstyle Ukulele, will be published by Mel Bay in 2026.

My music is available on all streaming platforms at https://open.spotify.com/artist/5dcokTG6C598OhTslHH5uo?si=hrQb7FViSZewDRSgECw9Ew:

Pins on the Map: my third fingerstyle guitar album was released on January 19, 2024. Watch the first single, “Open Road,” on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/uPBh8sZQsT4?si=EM_wAwnHFqU1VC9C.

Riding the Wave and Acoustic Oasis: my first two fingerstyle guitar albums.

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