GARY TURNER : Progressive Guitar Method Fingerpicking : Learn to Play Music.Com
Gary Turner
LearnToPlayMusic.com : 169 pages
This huge book by Gary Turner has a large amount of material in it, a lot of which is very useful and some of which I totally disagree with.
Firstly he gives the impression that between tablature and reading music, that tablature is much better than reading music. Wrong. Once you can read music you can place the various different parts, or voices, onto the sheet music and because for example, the melody will have different rhythms and note lengths to the bass, or the accompaniment, they can each be written with that in mind, and the player can follow the different lengths and play the piece accordingly, as the composer required it to be played. If you play tablature, the note length value about the tab will be a combination of all the parts, and therefore, you could not be sure which bit was which, and therefore you could be completely wrong in your guesswork.
Secondly, in explaining how to sit holding a guitar, he says either cross your legs over, and put the guitar on top, or put a footstool under the right leg, and put the guitar on that right. What about the classical approach, where you place the footstool on the left side and your left leg on top of it, with the guitar on that side? The reason the left leg is used by classical players that the guitar sits much closer to the player there, and therefore the difficult finger work you may need to do is nearer to you, and therefore much easier to handle. With the guitar on your right leg, you spend half your time holding onto the guitar like mad to stop it sliding off you leg completely. Not a good idea!
The book is split over 14 chapters , what it calls lessons, with a large amount of appendices, none of which give you the full and complete way to read music, which is a BIG mistake as far as I am concerned. It is mentioned and used throughout the book but not really dealt with properly.
Yes, there are lots of very interesting and useful moments in this book, but unlike a lot of tutor books, the writer doesn’t treat everything right as far as I am concerned. So, in essence, quite a good book, but not really good enough!
Chris Dumigan
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