Fingerstyle Blues Guitar by Joe McMurray

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Is this one of the best or worst method 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.

Open with 12-bar blues performance

Imagine ripping a blues solo on stage with your band – your drummer and bassist providing a comfortable soundscape on which your tasty guitar lines can float.
Now imagine that you’re alone on your front porch with only an acoustic guitar – wouldn’t you like to be able to jam on the blues all by yourself?
There is a long tradition of fingerstyle blues
Although much fingerstyle blues music is mixed with vocals, solo instrumental tunes can be so much fun!

Show books

Unusual episode – I’m going to do a rundown my own recently published books, Fingerstyle Blues Guitar: An In-Depth Study of the 12-Bar Blues in the Key of E Major: Books 1 and 2

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 3^rd chapter, and each following chapter will add icing on the cake.
Organized the books so that the concepts and exercises progress logically, thoroughly, and with a smooth difficulty progression.
- Take care to explain how to immediately apply each concept to your playing.

These are essentially one long book split down the middle: Book 2 picks up right where Book 1 left off. It was just too long – it would have been around 350 pages.
I recommend that everyone start with Book 1, which is suitable for all skill levels.
- Complete beginner players who work through the first few chapters should be able to improvise a satisfying fingerstyle blues solo.
- Intermediate to advanced players will breeze through the first few chapters, but will hopefully pick up some useful information starting around Chapter 4.
Book 2 is more suitable for intermediate to advanced players.
- It digs deeper into higher level concepts that are more technically and theoretically difficult, but will elevate your playing to new levels.
- You will learn to play new scales, turnarounds, rhythms, time signatures, key signatures, and more!
Again, I recommend that everyone start with Book 1, and then move on to Book 2.

Not here to teach you every authentic Robert Johnson lick or every subgenre of fingerstyle blues.
You won’t learn and memorize a bunch of new tunes.
However, I will clearly lay out how to create a solo fingerstyle guitar performance in which you improvise over the 12-bar blues structure using a monotonic bassline.
You will master ONE platform through which you can channel endless creativity and put on a satisfying blues performance.

Lots of fingerstyle blues books on the market – why work through mine?
I love many of these other books, and I have learned a lot from them.
The first thing that differentiates mine is its focus on playing the blues over a monotonic bassline.
Most other books focus on playing the blues over an alternating bassline (Travis style) (although they may present some material on using a monotonic bassline).
One focuses on playing the blues over a monotonic bassline – Joseph Alexander’s Fingerstyle Blues Guitar.
- I was honestly very influenced by this book, and I highly recommend it in addition to mine!
- However, Alexander’s book focuses more on teaching you a bunch of authentic blues language and licks over the monotonic bassline, with less emphasis on putting together a full lyrical 12-bar solo, nonetheless a full multi-chorus performance.
- My book starts from a more beginner-friendly place and builds with a much more gradual difficulty progression. Easier melodies and rhythms at first, with many, many examples.
- My book focuses on the bigger picture of putting together a cohesive blues chorus and then a cohesive multi-chorus performance.
I have spent a lot of time working through other books, I have real world experience, and I’ve tried to create a series of books that will be most effective at teaching you to actually jam on the blues.

Critical of my own books:

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