Review #5: The Gigging Guitarist by Michael Wood

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

Michael Wood’s “The Gigging Guitarist: Traditional Celtic and Appalachian Tunes for Fingerstyle Guitar” provides sonorous and playable solo fingerstyle repertoire for late beginner to advanced guitar players.  As implied by the title of the book, you could actually take the book to a coffee shop/restaurant/wedding ceremony gig and play it from cover to cover.  The tunes are not hard for an experienced player, but the arrangements sound really good!  If you are interested in Celtic tunes like Turlough O’Carolan’s “Si Beag Si Mhor,” Irish or Appalachian jigs or fiddle tunes, or traditional Appalachian ballads, then this book provides a nice selection of enjoyable material. 

Michael Wood’s arrangements utilize neither alternating bass / Travis Picking patterns nor any percussive techniques. Instead, the arrangements utilize arpeggiation to fill the spaces between the melody notes.  The tunes have a flowing style that is easy on the hands and the ears.  Also, the tunes are all in standard tuning.  There are a few where I personally like modifying to Drop D, but it isn’t necessary to do so.

1. Excellent repertoire in the above-mentioned styles.  You won’t find any of these tunes on mainstream radio in the USA.
2. The tunes can all be played without any page turns – great for gigs.
3. The arrangements cause low hand fatigue – great for gigs.  No full barre chords.
4. No alternate tunings – great for gigs.  You can always experiment with altering the tuning of a song if you feel so inclined.
5. Optional intros make the tunes sound more polished.
6. Performance notes at the beginning of the book provide a little bit of background for each tune.
7. Standard Notation and Tablature.  Almost no picking or fretting hand fingering is notated.
8. No audio access.

As mentioned, this is a repertoire book full of songs.  This is NOT a method book that teaches you step-by-step how to play solo fingerstyle guitar.  If you are taking lessons or independently learning how to play, this book would be a nice supplement to a method book.   If you like these tunes then you’re in luck because the author has released several more books with additional repertoire!

Acoustic steel string or classical guitar – no thumb over the top.

Written by Michael Wood.  © 2017

eBook: Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar: go to http://joemcmurray.com/checkout/ to purchase a pdf of my eBook.

Riding the Wave: my second fingerstyle guitar album is available on all streaming platforms.