Alexander Vinitsky
Mel Bay: 27 pages (includes a CD)
Russian – born Vinitsky has been writing jazz and swing – based music for classical guitar for a long time now, and a few over the years have come my way.
This latest book has 7 Etudes in various Swing and Jazz and Latin based styles, together with 11 Exercises which are very useful and carefully thought out.
The 7 Etudes are technically very useful (hence the Etude name) but in spite of that they are great pieces of music as well. There are 3 called Slow Swing, 1 Latin, 1 Samba, 1 Jazz – Rock, and 1 Swing, all very carefully fingered , and all of which are a considerable handful , when you first come across them. The effort though is well worth it as the end result is lots of fun in every case.
The 11 Exercises are all very short, indeed each less than a minute’s length on the accompanying CD.No1 is marked swing, with the associated rhythms you might expect, Nos 2 and 3 are Latin based , whilst the remaining 8 all have a little description explaining what it is that this particular exercise is helping you to play better. All are very useful to work on, and can only increase your playing standards.
So in summation, this is a volume that I loved, but then again, I have yet to come across a book of Vinitsky’s that I didn’t love.
Chris Dumigan