Az Samad Lessons

Tomo Fujita is a major name in the guitar world especially known for this videos on social media, his position as a associate professor at Berklee College of Music and also his reputation for being John Mayer’s guitar instructor at Berklee.

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed his work and even have studied with him via Skype twice. Both those lessons were very helpful for my playing and I continue to learn from Tomo’s daily posts online on his various social media channels. Tomo also has his Tomo Fujita Guitar Wisdom website where you can subscribe to his video lessons & improve your guitar skills.

I finally got my copy of Tomo’s 2017 book, Tomo Fujita Solo Guitar Etudes book (also known as Solo Etude Improve Foundation Strength Guitar Music Book & other versions of the translated Japanese title) which is from Rittor Music Japan.

The book contains transcriptions (in both standard notation & tablature for these 9 pieces:

• Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
• Hoi Hoi Hoi
• Three on Six
• Blues for Joe
• Mountain River Valley
• Room 418
• Kyoto
• Samuel John’s Groove
• Just Funky

Although the entire book is in Japanese, I managed to make sense of the text using Google Translate’s camera function (which in real time translates the text into English). It’s far from a perfect translation but gives enough context on what Tomo’s suggestions for practice for each piece are.

Overall this is a useful book for anyone who is interested in Tomo’s playing style and to understand more about his musical (melodic, rhythmic & harmonic) choices. There’s a lot to digest and having the CD helps you to hear how the pieces sound when Tomo performs them.

In conclusion, if you’ve been following Tomo’s work and wanted to get more insight to the pieces that he often performs on social media, this book is a worthwhile investment, even if you don’t read Japanese.

Pros: Great transcriptions, beautifully and clearly notated.
Cons: No English translation as this is a Japanese book, however you can use an app to read it (like what I did with Google Translate)
TLDR: If you’re a Tomo Fujita fan, you might enjoy this book.

As suggested by Tomo, you can get this book by searching for “Tomo Fujita Solo Guitar Etudes” online, or try eBay.

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