Beginners' Fingerpicking Guitar: Book & Online Audio

Pretty good

Book offers little or no instruction and the tabs are hard to read. Would not recommend.

This is a fine book, with a lot of good material. But much of it is of medium difficulty, and some of it I still can't touch after five years of playing fingerstyle. That's very frustrating. I really like some of the songs on the CD, and it's terribly disappointing to see the described as "beginner," and then find that I can't even begin to play them.It would probably be easier to play some of the stuff if it was played more slowly on the CD, with some tips and hints, and then played up to speed. But the CD only has full-speed renditions of full songs.Nevertheless, there are some things that relative beginners can sink their teeth into. I also like simply listening to the songs on the CD.

Stefan Grossman is a fine guitarist and his books have done wonders for fingerstyle guitarists everywhere. But--his books are NOT for beginners! I bought this book hoping to learn some new techniques and found several of the arrangements quite difficult, and many in alternate tunings. Most have words accompanying the tunes, so that these are types of Travis-picking backgrounds, of a sort. You should have been playing guitar for a few years, steadily, before you attempt the tunes in this book.

Be warned: this is not for beginners. There is virtually no tutorial material here, just a series of - admittedly attractive - transcriptions of tunes arranged by Grossman, Dave van Ronk, John Fahey and Happy Traum. But you will need to be a competent guitarist with some experience of fingerpicking to get to grips with them