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Home Study
Q Do you have any suggestions
for a comprehensive guitar home-study program? I think that one
with a video component would be especially useful.
Susan Beck
Santa Barbara, California
A There are many suppliers of home-study
material, and some of them are very good. You are going to have
to put together your own program of instruction, and it will involve
taking a chance on a package that looks interesting. Fortunately,
prices are reasonable so the risk is minimal.
What style of music do you want to study? That will affect where
you look. Homespun Tapes (www.homespuntapes.com)
is one of the best resources. The company's videos, tapes, and CD/book
packages are of a consistently high quality. Well-known players
in a wide variety of styles are represented. If you're a singer-songwriter,
you may find the sets by Livingston Taylor, David Wilcox, or Patty
Larkin to be of particular interest. If you're looking for an interesting
traditional music package, try Stefan Grossman's Guitar Workshop
(www.guitarvideos.com),
which has a strong orientation toward country blues but also includes
many other styles. If you want to study jazz, look to Jamey Aebersold
(www.jajazz.com),
one of the pioneers in home play-along recordings. His 80-page catalog
offers a wide array of study possibilities and suggested syllabus
ideas.
For improvisation, my favorite is Jerry Bergonzi's widely available
Inside Improvisation series (Advance Music, www.advancemusic.com).
These books were not written specifically for guitar, but if you
can read music they will have you successfully improvising faster
than any other method I've seen. Each of the four volumes comes
with a CD of examples and play-along cuts. For fingerstyle, Johnny
Norris' Blues Solos for Acoustic Guitar (Amsco) is wonderful.
It packs an abundance of techniques in a slim book/CD package; country,
urban, rock, and modern blues flavors are all taught using original
compositions that are a blast to play.
Having said that, I want to stress that no amount of home study
material, no matter how well written, can replace a good teacher.
Videos can be replayed for observation, but they never stop to answer
your questions. They never watch you and make comments about your
technique. They can't intuitively fill in extraneous information
that fits your situation. If you only have access to recorded instruction,
by all means use it. But if you can get to a teacher who fits your
needs, spare no effort in searching him or her out, and then complement
your in-person lessons with books and videos.
—Gary Joyner
Jobim Transcriptions
QI really enjoyed the
transcription of "Samba de Uma Nota Só" in David Simons'
"Bosses of Bossa Nova" (September 1999). Do you know of any other
transcriptions of Antonio Carlos Jobim's music for acoustic guitar?
Alan Breedlove
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
A There are several nice
collections of Jobim's music available for guitarists. Carlos Barbosa-Lima's
book of Jobim arrangements entitled Nine Pieces provides
tablature and standard notation and is available from Guitar Solo
Publications in San Francisco ([415] 869-1144; fax [415] 896-1155;
www.gspguitar.com).
Hal Leonard also offers two books of Jobim's tunes, both of which
include notation and tablature. Antonio Carlos Jobim for Solo
Guitar features chord melody–style arrangements of 16 songs
and includes performance notes and an introduction by Fred Sokolow.
Antonio Carlos Jobim for Fingerstyle Guitar is a collection
of ten Jobim favorites. Get more information at www.halleonard.com
or order them from your local sheet-music emporium.
—Paul Kotapish
Tip Sheet: Getting
the Right Angle
Got any great guitar tips or discoveries that you'd like to
share? Send them to Tip Sheet, Acoustic Guitar, PO Box 767,
San Anselmo, CA 94979. If we print your tip, we'll give you a year's
free subscription, gift subscription, or subscription renewal.
Here is this issue's winner, submitted by Dan Drewry of Apalachin,
New York.
When I sit with my guitar, the instrument is angled back so that I can see
the whole fingerboard. When I play standing up, the angle changes
and I can only see the binding along the edge of the fingerboard,
which I find confusing. I've solved this problem by wearing a belt
bag (fanny pack) in front, between me and the guitar. It holds the
guitar out from my waist at just the same angle as when I'm sitting
down, and it is a handy place to keep my capo, extra picks, and
other accessories.
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