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Welcome to my mini-series on how to become a better acoustic fingerstyle guitarist through the use of general guitar method books. I’ll show you how to arrange melodies from:
- Essential Elements for Guitar: Comprehensive Guitar Method, and
- Hal Leonard’s Guitar Method Book 1
These books contain many of the exact same exercises.
When you arrange a tune for fingerstyle guitar, your goal is to take an unadorned melody and to put all of that fingerstyle goodness underneath. This means that you will simultaneously play the melody and the harmony. Sometimes you’ll even want to add percussive elements. You want to sound like a full band all by yourself.
My arranging process has been codified in my book Arranging for Fingerstyle Guitar, which is available as an eBook which you can purchase through the link below.
In today’s video, I’ll walk you through the process of arranging Example 10 from the Essential Elements book.
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.
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.