Guitar Books Review #13: Fingerstyle Guitar by Ken Perlman
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ต.ค. 2024
- Is this one of the best or worst method books for fingerstyle guitar?
You can learn to play music by simultaneously using a variety of resources including teachers, online resources, and books.
Ken Perlman’s Fingerstyle Guitar is a method book for learning to play solo fingerstyle guitar in the folk, blues, fiddle tune, Celtic, and ragtime styles. The book becomes progressively more difficult - the beginning is appropriate for beginner fingerstyle players, and the end is challenging for intermediate and even advanced players. The book is extremely long (232 pages) and extremely detailed with sections of dense explanatory text. While I enjoy many of the tunes in this book (especially the Irish, English, and Scottish fiddle tunes), some of the arrangements are clunky, difficult, and not worth the effort. While I’m happy to have worked through Fingerstyle Guitar, I would not recommend this to most players unless you are specifically interested in older styles of music and you’ve already exhausted other options.
The book quickly introduces alternating bass (Travis picking) arrangements and gradually presents standard guitar techniques including hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, etc. I like that Perlman provides exercises and lots of short, accessible tunes like Elizabeth Cotton’s “Freight Train” to build your technique. The tunes and arrangements are stylistically similar to those in Stefan Grossman’s “Complete Country Blues Guitar Book” and “Complete Celtic Fingerstyle Guitar Book” but with more technical explanations. The book also provides types of tunes similar to those found in Mel Bay’s “Complete Chet Atkins Guitar Method” although with a very different teaching approach.
While the first five chapters of the book are accessible with some fun 20 second tunes, the book’s difficulty increases starting in Chapter 6. The tunes move higher up the fretboard, utilizing alternate tunings, and requiring much more fretting with your thumb over the top. These are important things to learn and prepare you for the fun repertoire-heavy chapters at the end of the book.
The final four chapters of the book provide repertoire tunes organized into categories: “Southern Fiddle Tunes,” “Old-Time Songs and Ballads,” “Irish, English, and Scottish Fiddle Tunes,” and “Rags.” There are some nice arrangements in these chapters, but I found that many of them seem to be especially difficult. I believe that a good arrangement should find a balance between the complexity of the tune and playability, and many of these just feel clunky to me. Lots of difficult passages and fingerings even after putting in serious practice. There are detailed explanations of techniques, but little explanation of how to actually play through an individual tune with a smooth performance. Other books like Richard Saslow’s "The New Art of Ragtime Guitar" provide smoother arrangements and much more tune-specific help.
You will find that most of these tunes are too short to actually play out at gigs without coming up with your own variations. The exceptions are the rags in the final chapter which are quite lengthy and difficult. For the shorter tunes throughout the book, there is no discussion about how to extend them for performance.
Perlman provides some cool background information on styles and specific tunes. The Celtic fiddle tune chapter has great information on the differences between single jigs, double jigs, slip jigs, set tunes, reels, hornpipes, and slow aires, with great examples of each.
The book provides examples in both TAB and standard notation (treble clef). Each tune/example is presented in its entirety in TAB and then again in standard notation. This is great in that it minimizes page turns if you are reading the tune. It is also highly annoying because all of the fingering details are only included in the standard notation, so if you are reading the TAB version of the tune, you have to constantly flip over and search through the standard notation version. The author/publisher should have included the fingerings in the TAB. Also, after the beginning of the book, there is no right hand fingering.
Overall, this book contains a wide scope of valuable information and fun old folk, blues, fiddle, Celtic, and ragtime tunes. Many of the arrangements feel clunky and difficult to me even after putting in a lot of work. Many of the explanations of techniques are helpful if you’ve never used them before but are hard to read. If you want to play fingerstyle guitar, don’t start with this book.
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Pins on the Map: my 3rd fingerstyle guitar album will be released in Jan 2024. The 1st single, "Open Road," was released 10/20/23. Watch it here: • Joe McMurray - Open Ro... . The 2nd single, “Lost and Found,” was released 11/3/23.
Joe. I taught myself how to play "Clap" by Steve Howe although not completely up to speed and kind of clunky on some of the transitions. What book would you recommend to me at this level? I'd like to learn more about this type of guitar playing. I really like your channel!
Oops I just replied to your comment on my Review #12 video and mentioned this book.. Anyway, if you can get through "Clap," then you must have a strong handle on the solo travis picking/alternating bass style. However, I do recommend that you spend some time mastering tunes that you can play through at a performance level with musicality (tone, dynamics, etc.). Mel Bay's "The Complete Chet Atkins Guitar Method" is probably my favorite method book for travis picking/alternating bass style. It will be "easy" for you should be able to truly master the tunes. Again, try out video lessons or one-on-one lessons with a private teacher.
@@JoeMcMurrayMusic Thanks Joe. I will get that book. I appreciate you getting back to me!
Thank you for this review. I have been playing only for one year so I´d better stick to the Alfred fingerstyle method book. I am enjoying it a lot
Thanks for watching and commenting! I'd agree that you should work your way through the Alfred book at a minimum before heading over to this one. To be clear, the beginning of Perlman's book is great for beginners, but it's just not my first choice.
Remember to simulaneously supplement any method books with repertoire tunes from other sources, video lessons, in-person lessons, etc!
@@JoeMcMurrayMusic Thanks. For repertoire I am thinking of purchasing The gigging guitarist
@@danielmontiel4561I love that one!
Considering the fact that you've gone through a lot of books that cover this same topic, has there been one book (or set of books) that you've found more complete than the others? By the way, I was enjoying that version of Pay day by Mississippi john hurt that you were playing.
I am planning on doing some comparison videos in the future that will get into these details, but broadly speaking, I like the Alfred Fingerstyle Guitar series (Beginning, Intermediate, Mastering, Arranging) the most. That being said, these books cover lots of different styles and don't provide any "famous" or well-known songs unless they are public domain. The Hal Leonard Fingerstyle Guitar Method has the most popular repertoire, and while I think people should go through it, I have some serious issues with it. The Complete Chet Atkins Guitar Method covers Travis style playing very thoroughly and left me feeling satisfied. Only older tunes in that one fwiw. Fingerstyle Guitar From Scratch is a really fun and thorough book for beginners, but it doesn't really get into solo playing. That author (Bruce Emery) has written a couple other books that may get into solo playing but I haven't been through them. Perlman's book in this video has some great redeeming qualities and I'm glad to have worked through it. However, while I liked some of the tunes (like the ones I demonstrate in this video), I really didn't care for others.
Thanks for the detailed response. I think I'm going to look at the Chet atkins method because I like how it covers the scales and then gives little pieces/exercise in each key. Do you know other books that kind of focus on practicing in each key? I feel like it's easier to find that with piano books. I found the "The Roger Hudson Guitar Method: for Classical and Fingerstyle Guitarists", which seems to take a similar approach, but that's it. @@JoeMcMurrayMusic