Building Guitar Arrangements from the Ground Up (Fretted) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I bought this book about a year ago because I was beginning to write a lot of fingerstyle pieces but I felt limited with my abilities to take a melody I concocted and make it into a guitar solo. This book solved my problem.

It takes some easy melodies such as Simple Gifts and Battle Hymn of the Republic and shows you how to add bass lines and inner voicings. The levels of complexity of the bass lines and harmonies increase in complexity as the book progresses, culminating in the arrangement of Simple Gifts that appears on one of Muriel's CD's (Heart Strings). First a steady bass is presented, then a rotating bass then alternating bass. For more study of the Alternating Bass style check out Mark Hanson's book, the Art of Contemporary Travis Picking.

Alternate tunings are touched upon briefly, namely Drop-D. Sometimes an arrangement may benefit from an alternate tuning in the family of the key you are playing in. A song in the key of D may benefit from the darker bass that is made possible by lowering your bass E string down to D.

Also, if the key you have written out the melody isn't what you want and you don't have transposing software around, there is a chapter on transposing with a very easy method using the Circle of Fifths, much to the horror of beginner music students everywhere! Actually, the Circle of Fifths is VERY easy to understand and examples are worked out!!

Great book and Muriel Anderson presents the material very well.

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Product Description:
This book will teach you how to take a song and arrange it for solo guitar.The step-by-step method and examples give you insight into developing arrangements by ear, adding bass lines, and embellishing your arrangements.Building Guitar Arrangements gives you the tools you need to create beautiful arrangements of any song...on your own!44-minute audio accompaniment.

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