Guitar - Intermediate

SKU: MB.31008M

Perfect binding. Blues. Book and online audio. 160 pages. Mel Bay Publications, Inc #31008M. Published by Mel Bay Publications, Inc (MB.31008M).

ISBN 9781513467016. 8.75x11.75 inches.

Blind Lemon Jefferson was a trail blazer, both as a singer and guitarist, but also as a commercial phenomenon, for he was the first blues musician to establish the tremendous appeal that blues, as played and sung by rural African American folk, had for the record-buying public. It is no exaggeration to say that the sales of Lemon’s records paved the way for a host of other solo rural blues musicians to record in his wake and made the record companies more willing to give other musicians a chance, in the hopes of achieving similar success. 

Lemon ’s record sales weren’t what made him a great musician, though - that could only be attributed to his startlingly virtuosic guitar - playing and soulful singing, developed over years of busking, building on his natural gifts with a great deal of practice and work. In the Guitar of Blind Lemon Jefferson author John Miller presents transcriptions, in standard notation and tablature, of 22 of Lemon’s greatest performances, with an additional essay examining Lemon’s senses of time and phrasing and his picking techniques. Also included is a download link to all the original recordings. 

To present a picture of Lemon the man, noted blues researchers Alan Governar and Kip Lornell have contributed an essay focusing on Lemon’s early life, the origins of his music, and his time spent in a musical partnership with Lead Belly. Links are provided to downloadable performances of the songs in the book from which the transcriptions were made, so that you can have Lemon’s sound in your head as you learn to play his songs.

Blind Lemon Jefferson was remarkable, even in a style that abounded in great musicians, and some measure of his influence can be seen in the fact that musicians recorded in the 1960s, more than thirty years after his death, were still covering his songs and stealing guitar licks from him. The Guitar of Blind Lemon Jefferson gives you the resources needed to learn what was so special about Lemon’s music, and to experience his musical excellence from inside the music itself.

Titles include: One Dime Blues, Got The Blues, Dry Southern Blues, Big Night Blues, Rabbit Foot Blues, Shuckin' Sugar Blues, Where Shall I Be, Wartime Blues, Black Horse Blues, Prison Cell Blues, Piney Woods Money Mama, See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, He Arose From The Dead, Beggin' Back, Broke And Hungry, Bad Luck Blues, Matchbox Blues, Lemon's Worried Blues, That Crawlin' Baby Blues, Easy Rider Blues, Stocking Feet Blues and Right of Way Blues

Level 2/3 • 160 pages • Direct download link to audio files. 

Lyrics/Chord Symbols/Guitar Chord Diagrams Guitar

SKU: HL.363741

By Taylor Swift. Guitar Chord Songbook. Country, Pop. Softcover. 152 pages. Published by Hal Leonard (HL.363741).

ISBN 9781705132388. UPC: 840126956351. 6.0x9.0x0.389 inches.

Get just what you need to play Taylor's greatest hits on guitar! This third edition features 44 tunes with complete lyrics, chord symbols, and guitar chord diagrams from Taylor's country as well as pop career. Includes: Back to December • Blank Space • Cardigan • Exile • Fifteen • I Knew You Were Trouble • Love Story • ME! • Mean • No Body, No Crime • Picture to Burn • Red • Shake It Off • Teardrops on My Guitar • We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together • Wildest Dreams • You Belong with Me • and more.

By Various. Edited by Trevor de Clercq. Fake Book. Softcover. 224 pages. Published by Hal Leonard

Guitar solo

SKU: GH.GE-11464

Composed by Benjamin Staern. Duration 15 minutes. Gehrmans Musikforlag #GE 11464. Published by Gehrmans Musikforlag (GH.GE-11464).

ISBN 979-0-070-11464-6. A4 inches.

Work note by the composer:

When I received the news of this commission, I had no idea what it would lead to. Writing for guitar solo is not the same as composing for orchestra where you have forty voices where you can easily mask an entire section. Here you are very naked to the bone.
The starting point for this work was from J.S. Bach's Chaconne in D-minor that Johannes had performed in concert, originally written for violin but there is a version transcribed for guitar and piano made by Ferruccio Busoni. When I went to Cortona (in Tuscany, Italy) completed the southern mentality of this work.
Arpalineais actually a merged word in Italian language. Arpa means harp, however in a musical context it's more or less resembled with the word arpeggio, which means broken chords. Lineameans line.

The work is divided in three parts.
I. Arpeggio: It starts with an opening chaconne-like sequence and is marked with a certain depth in which the chords starts to separate from the organum note in the bass and it culminates into a section called with rhythmical focus. These sections alternates, variates which each other.
The middle section has a playful and childish atmosphere where the guitarist knocks on the body of the guitar resembling a Spanish folk instrument cajon. This is leading to a section which tends more to a very aggressive fusion-like riff that loses control and reaches its climax at the end.

II. Linea: The static rhytmical pulse is now disintegrated and it forms more or less sort of a free, improvisational state in a rubatolike tempo. The character is described as a very hot day with temperatures rising above 37! C (or 100! F) where you can hardly do anything just sitting dozed off and pespiring because of the extreme heat watching a huge fog coming up in the evening that spreads around the Tuscan atmosphere.

III. Finale: It starts off with fast one-note ostinati then more and more notes pop up like a gradual rain storm with thunder strikes! And eventually it leads to that is a large flood through the streets of an medieval Southern town. The work ends with a short circuit slapped strings along with extremely fast tremolos that reaches higher and louder as possible!

Benjamin Staern

Guitar

SKU: UT.CH-387

Composed by Ferdinando Carulli. Edited by Romolo Calandruccio. Classical. Score. Ut Orpheus #CH 387. Published by Ut Orpheus (UT.CH-387).

ISBN 9790215328235. 9 x 12 inches.

Opus 114 is certainly one of Carulliâ??s most important didactic works, so much so that the author himself made a point of writing in the second edition of his famous Method op. 27 (1819): The student, when moving on to the second part, must continue to practise on the easy pieces which are to be found in opus nos. 50, 15, 35, 36, 93, 7 and above all in opus 114. He maintained this indication also in later editions of the Method itself, unlike what he did with other collections of studies which were no longer recommended.
The purpose of op. 114, in particular of the preludes, is clearly explained by the author himself in the preface of op. 265: I have already offered preludes in my opus nos. 71 and 114 to people, but they serve to study and learn to play all sorts of difficult passages, to practise modulating, and learn to improvise on the guitar. Carulli seems to want to provide his students with a large handbook of formulas typical of his musical writing and he does so by making use of the keys which, in his opinion, are most congenial to the guitar. In his Method he points out: Each instrument has its favourite keys: the guitar can be played in all keys, but the best ones are: A major and minor, D major and minor, E major and minor, C, G, F. The others are difficult; [â?¦]. However, some of the difficult ones are included but only in the fourth part. Of course, the easiness of a key essentially depends on the possibility of extensive use of the open strings, especially in the low notes, ensuring the accompaniment on the main degrees.
This edition has some unique features. First of all, it is the first complete modern edition of Carulliâ??s op. 114; it presents an important critical apparatus in which the Carullian technique is presented and analysed; finally, Carulli's original fingering is indicated in the score (including that of the thumb of the left hand) and the missing one was obtained from the comparison of his other fingerings present in other works. All this allows an easy and complete reading both for those who perform the pieces following the nineteenth-century performance practice with a historical instrument, and for those who play a modern instrument.