The Complete Guide to Playing Blues Guitar Part One - Rhythm Guitar: Master Blues Rhythm Guitar Playing (Play Blues Guitar Book 1) Kindle Edition

I retired this year and learn to play the Blues Guitar was on the top of my to do list. I have been messing around with trying to learn to play the guitar for over 40 years. I have tried private lessons, books and videos but nothing has ever really clicked for me. After giving it a go I usually give up in frustration and my guitar returns to the deep recesses of my closet waiting for the next time I get inspired.I started by digging out my old materials and started watching lessons on YouTube. Although this was helpful I soon discovered that I had no real direction and was not sure that I was progressing. So I decided to look for a book series that would give me a framework or curriculum to work with. After a lot of research I found this book and have been using it for two weeks. I can say that I have made more progress in this time than I have ever made in my past attempts. The lessons are easy to understand and build in a very logical order. They get to the point and get you playing right away. The audio and backing tracks make the lessons fun and challenging. I look forward to practicing every day and believe I have finally found a book that will help me reach my guitar goals.

I bought the Kindle edition based on the many great reviews of this and other Fundamental Changes books. I'm only into the first chapter, but this book has made an immediate improvement in my blues rhythm playing. I look foward to progressing through the rest of this series. The Kindle edition is very functional, unlike other music books that I have tried in that format. The audio samples can be downloaded from their website, unzipped on a computer. And transfered to your smartphone or tablet. Having the audio samples is great for hearing what each example should sound like.

I purchased the book solely on the weight of the positive reviews on Amazon and I wasn’t disappointed, so it gets a five star from me. I’m only an average player who picks up a guitar once or twice a week, but I found so much information and helpful guidance in this book, that my guitar has been strung over my shoulder nearly every day since I got the book and I love the audio files that go along with it, it really helps me get into the swing of things and have fun. Excellent source and there’s more than enough in this one to explore his other books when I’m done too. Great value. Thank you.

I bought the first three volumes of this series, and figured I'd review this one since it's the most likely one someone would purchase first. I've been playing just about anything with strings for more decades than I'd like to think about, and I own hundreds of technical music books. I'm always looking for interesting approaches, different ways of looking at theory and application, and, especially pertinent regarding Mr. Alexander's works, the most efficient ways to teach. So here it is: if you're a relative novice looking to play blues or rock, you'll be wasting a lot of time if you buy any other book.'Complete Guide' bypasses everything you don't need to know (you can waste years on that stuff), and provides a comprehensive, standard, easily applied method of learning rhythm and lead for blues, which is the basis of rock and much of jazz. With a bit of effort, you'll get to the point that you can play with others faster using Mr. Alexander's method much more quickly than if you'd gone to music school or tried another approach. The sound files are very helpful, later books in this series seamlessly build on the material presented here, and if you want to later try any of the Jazz or 'modern guitar' material, you'll be treading comfortably familiar ground.I'd thought it had all been written, and than nobody could add much to the genre. I was wrong. Buy this one, you'll be glad you did.

I wanted the entire series immediately but I know I'd just jump into the middle of book two and try to understand pieces hoping to get the entire books worth of learning very quickly. Instead I've purchased the first book and will go thru 1 chapter each week to get the full info from each chapter. Of course I've already glanced thru the entire book and can't wait to get started. Love the way Joseph presents and explains. I alSo have the caged lick book which I jump around in , using it as a reference guide since I don't know that many scales. mailto:[email protected]?subject=Please%20send%20me%20a%20PDF%20copy%20of%2025%20MAJOR%20Pentatonic%20Licks%20for%20Blues%20Guitar&body=Hi!%0A%0APlease%20paste%20a%20link%20to%20your%20review%20here:%0A%0AWe%20will%20send%20a%20PDF%20copy%20of%20%E2%80%8B25%20MAJOR%20Pentatonic%20Licks%20for%20Blues%20Guitar%20within%2024%20hours.%0A%0AThanks!

This is a great book. I am an intermediate player who has primarily played Acoustic guitar. I knew open chords and some basic barre chords. This book showed me a variety of different altered 7th, 9th, and 13th chords that I could play anywhere on the guitar. It also does a great job of explaining the 12 bar blues form and some or the altered chords you can play. I have seen a number of method books and really like this one because it teaches you practical, usable skills right from the start. This is an excellent book for anyone exploring blues rhythm guitar.

After years of guitar playing I came to realize that I needed to go back to basics. The area of rhythm guitar is something I've always wanted to improve in my playing. Blues guitar is one of many genres that interests me, so this book proved to be intriguing. Once I saw the format of the exercises, I purchased it. The purchase price is quite reasonable for all that you get. You not only have the book, but also audio in order to hear all the examples demonstrated. I've learned some new things and benefited from the exercises. You can too if you're looking to learn something new or brush up on the basics. Get the book. You'll be glad you did.

Having played guitar at an advanced level for about 15 years I was looking for something as a bit of a companion or ideas to get me back into playing blues again.When the book turned up though I immediately felt like I'd been mugged, and realised why there aren't any real photographs of the book on the Amazon listing. It looks like it's been printed off on someone's desktop printer, the quality is really poor - you would never get away with selling this in an actual book shop. 'Printed in Great Britain by Amazon', apparently.The cover looks like a printed off low resolution JPG image with artefacts in it, and neither the cover nor the pages inside are actually printed level, it's all at a slight angle away from being perpendicular to the spine of the book. The book layout isn't professionally done either, with no thought to appropriate margins. This means when you try read the pages, you'd have to push the book down to the point of probably breaking the spine because the tablature or text is pushed right up to the edge of the inside of the page. Ridiculous.I appreciate that some guitarists would want as much information or examples crammed in as possible, but the book doesn't even feature a photograph of something to make it at least a bit visually interesting. That's forgivable in books of sheet music, but in a book attempting to convey understanding of this musical style and attempting to tell a little bit about the musicians that played it well, it's not great. It's basically just a printed out ebook that someone made on Microsoft Word.Regarding content, well that's okay I suppose. It doesn't read like the type of educational books on music you might be accustomed to by large publishers, and is very informally written. There's lots and lots of rhythms laid out with a small explanation of what it is, but it's not the sort of explanation you'd get from a music teacher, it's quite poor with lots of generic rationale like "this can give a lot of interest to the song" or "using ___ we can easily generate great interest in the rhythm guitar part." Erm, ok.The best advice given by the book is a recurring theme, which is to listen to good guitarists and basically just copy them. Which is kind of what this book reads like. The best way I could describe it would be like getting one of the older kids at school to sit down and show you 30 rhythm sections he's learnt from listening to a fairly narrow range of a few famous blues guitarists. You'll get some great inspiration and lots to noodle about with, but don't expect to get close to the kind of explanation as to why something works well that you'd get from an experienced music teacher.I feel slightly guilty being this harsh as I'm all for the self publish revolution and helping British kids make their fortune from selling ebooks. There's lots of glowing reviews for this book from new guitarists who don't really know where to start, and for them having something that just gets them playing different rhythms and being told what to copy is probably a really good thing. If you're experienced enough with guitar though that you can just rifle through Spotify, find some blues songs you like and pick up some tabs with relative ease, you'll probably be quite irritated that this is pitched as "the complete guide" and wonder what happened to the tuition part of it.So in conclusion, not for me and it's getting returned. Which isn't a big deal as it would have been for me, but if I'd spent £15 on this as a present for someone with not much time to spare, I'd be pretty bloody annoyed.

Having spent roughly ten years rearing a family I finally found myself returning to playing guitar. I am completely self taught having learnt through dissecting other people’s songs and by ear. These blues introduction texts along with the caged system for guitar offered me a springboard to actually learn and understand the guitar in ways that I which had of been open to me 25 yrs ago. As Joseph hints at in his books in order to learn how to speak we must learn to imitated the sounds of those around us until we find our own voice. We this series of books certainly helped with that. They are a well structured guide providing relevant and useful licks and patterns that help provide the building blocks for solo playing with a blues foundation. Highly recommend to anyone looking for a structured introduction to blues guitar.

I have had guitar lessons for a few years and progressed well, I didn’t really know much of the basis for playing though... a house move a no tutor led me to getting this book... I like rock and blues so thought this would be a good start.Loads of good info, the backing tracks for playing are a great plus - never thought I’d jam with a band!The lessons are manageable and backed up with some online video clips, again helped in bits I didn’t understand.Overall a great product and also a massive choice to suit all tastes - already got my order in for the others in the series on my Xmas list! 🤘

The book appears to be what I was looking for but as it isn't possible to download the audio files to a tablet and it seems it may it be the case that it's also selective as to which pc it will permit access it all becomes somewhat of a major disappointment. I've mailed the provider but as yet received no response.

Excellent book with lots of very useful information written in a great style. I am reading this on my Kindle App on my IPad and I think this is the best way to read it. It is a problem that we can’t download the audio links to iPad but the content it so good that I don’t think it’s fair to remove a star