Alternating Bass

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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.

It says that the copyright is © 2014 Wise Publications, but the book seems to be published and distributed by Hal Leonard.

My own books:

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.

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.

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.