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Book Review: A Study of the Many Shades of the Blues by Mickey Baker

October 16, 2023 by azsamadlessons 2 Comments

Although Mickey Baker is most known for his jazz guitar method books, I actually found this book to be an even better book. If you start listening to his music, you can hear how much more of blues as well as R&B is in his guitar style. Therefore, I feel there is a lot to learn from him teaching those styles. After all, he was a session guitarist playing this music!

This really feels like an honest raw private guitar lesson with an experienced musician. Mickey teaches 10 songs that acts like etudes in the style so it’s kind of a cross between classical guitar, fingerpicking guitar and fingerstyle blues. In terms of usefulness, you get melodic vocabulary that can be the basis of your own solos and jams. In terms of chops, there’s plenty of contrapuntal guitar goodness in the whole book.

The real treat is actually going through the book while listening to the accompanying recording with maestro Mickey Baker explaining each piece, the fingerings, inspiration for each piece and little anecdotes that put the pieces in perspective.

I wish this book remained in print and was more easily available since it seems like a lost gem in the sea of guitar book. The good thing is that the audio recording is actually available on YouTube if you look for it (hint!).

In conclusion, this is a book I would recommend if you like the blues and want to get ideas on how to approach blues playing in a fingerstyle manner.

It’s not about improvisation but there’s so much improvisational vocabulary embedded in the pieces.

It’s not about harmony but you can learn a lot about chords and harmonic movement by learning the pieces.

What it is is a good book documenting lessons from someone who was living this music. Good stuff!

Pros: A lot of idiomatic vocabulary taught by an experienced musician and educator.
Cons: Mickey sometimes stumbles on the recording and some of there is no complete performances of the pieces, only him teaching each section part by part.
TLDR: If you want to learn some acoustic fingerstyle blues guitar, this is a valuable resource to both learn and teach this style.

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[Submissions for Review Consideration]

  • Are you an author who wrote a jazz, guitar or music book?
  • Have you created a DVD or an online video course or subscription based website?
  • Would you like me to review your book/course?

Please send me a message at azsamad2 at gmail.com with:

For courses: a link to the course/video/product + access info etc.
For books: a link to the book (Dropbox) or PDF attachment (if it’s small) for review consideration.

Depending on whether I dig the book/course, I’ll let you know if I do plan to review it!

I cannot guarantee a review for every submission & if I’m not too into it, I may opt not to review it. I mean, it’s better to get a good review that for me to write a bad review just because it’s not a match for the kind of stuff I dig right? :p

NOTE: All reviews reflect my honest personal opinion so be aware that I will point out both cool Pros and Cons that I see in the work. You dig? 

Filed Under: Blues Guitar, Book Reviews, Fingerstyle Guitar, Guitar Technique, Music Theory, Practice Secrets Tagged With: acoustic fingerstyle guitar, blues guitar, blues guitar lessons, fingerstyle exercises, fingerstyle guitar, how to practice guitar, improvisation, Mickey Baker, vocabulary

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Tom says

    July 16, 2024 at 11:06 am

    Hi, i really love this review. I tried to find online a place where i could read/buy the lessons. But it seems like it aint anywhere.

    Any chance you can help me out?
    Best Wishes,
    Tom.

    Reply
    • azsamadlessons says

      July 19, 2024 at 10:12 am

      Hi Tom, so good to hear from you. This particular book is actually out of print unfortunately. It was published by Mel Bay, but it looks like they are not printing or selling it anymore. Your best bet is to try to keep looking out for it on eBay or Amazon. The audio portion is however available on YouTube and you can listen to it here:

    • https://youtu.be/jqwLmrrxq8E?si=1ochBe7gZOBDm0Ad
    • Hope this helps!

      Reply

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