Customer Reviews
Excellent material - By: Chris Wood, 11 Jun 2008 
A very good, easy to follow guide. This includes much of the basics & a lot of more complicated material as well. The only person who won't benefit from this is already a complete expert. Strongly recommended.
COMPLETE PRACTICAL HELP - RIFFS AND LICKS NOT INCLUDED - By: K. NOBLE, 03 May 2008 I wanted to move my playing on after 30 years of playing rough, busker style, & this book has been fantastic - it just feels like a quality, informative, straightforward & complete guide to the basics & beyond.
The book isn't about style & "licks" - it's more about the elements of playing blues, including scales, slides & bends, so you can put the different pieces together to improvise your own stuff.
Each exercise builds progressively more difficult elements & aspects into your knowledge base, to use as you see fit - eg minor pentatonics, sevenths, ninths, funky blues, plus clues which signpost that John Lee Hooker played Delta Blues style, Jimi & SRV favoured seventh sharp ninths or whatever, giving you an idea what sound & feel the exercise may have, putting a marker on blues styles you may already like but don't know why, & without going into anoraky detailed tabs.
Granted, a lot of the tab notation isn't what you're hearing on the CD (Ganapes definitely slides a lot when he's told you to bend), but you can use your own ear to work that out, especiallly if you've been playing a few years.
If you think you can listen to BB or Albert or whoever for a week & learn more than this book, good luck to you, but that's like saying you can play footballl like Maradona by watching a few matches...
overrated - By: C. N. Daly, 26 Mar 2008 
I bought this book based on the strength of the reviews here.
Good Points:
Starts off at a basic level anyone can follow.
Gives alot of different chord & scale shapes & uses.
Accompanying CD of alll tracks.
Bad Points:
All of the songs are absolutely terrible. The phrasing & note choice are boring & cheesey. Anyone who has ever listened to any blues music will find the songs to be a complete chore to play.
The book COMPLETELY fails to address vibrato, slurs, dynamics... basicallly alll of the most important aspects of blues guitar.
You are expected to play everything with alternate picking (thats just stupid) Its far more important to develop hybrid & economy picking skills.
You are also expected to learn to play & bend strings with your fourth finger... what???, as well as having to learn some incredible impractacle fingerings for licks.
Ive been playing guitar for a few years & wanted to use this book as a primer so i could get the sound & feel of blues under my fingers & bring it into my own playing. After getting about 2/3 through the book i gave up.
You learn more about the blues from a week of playing BB, Albert, Freddy or Clapton licks than this book will teach you in a year.
And to a complete beginner, Id recommend spending some money on lessons.
This book has enough bad advice & pointless busy work to completely stunt your progress. As well as songs that will quickly extinguish your desire to learn.
Great learning tool! - By: A. MCDUFF, 07 Sep 2007 I have used many methods to learn/improve my playing from books with CDs to tuition DVDS to the internet. Without a doubt this book is far better than any other material I have used to date. I have been playing since Jan 2007 & not reallly going any where. I had this book delivered had a look through it & I must say was greatly impressed before I started!! The way the book is set out is great from suggested time to spend on each lesson to amount of time to spend a day. As I have been playing for 8 months I knew chords, string bending, etc. so the fact that there was little explanation doesn't bother me. I recomend for total beginners to visit blues websites (there are loads) & learn the basics for a while & then follow this book as you WILL NOT go wrong & within a short space of time (21 lessons = 1 week/lesson = 21 weeks) & as the book states you will be at an intermediate/advanced level.
If I have one bit of advice worth noting, GET THIS BOOK! You will no regret it I promise.
Used Every Day - By: C. R. Downing, 31 Mar 2007 I use this book every day in teaching the guitar. Students who like the blues reallly appreciate the styles & sound of each exercise. You get to sound very good fast with this book. If you like blues then this is one of the best, but you'll need to get the basics learnt first. For that try Wolf Marshalll's series, Vol 1,2,3. If you get the non CD versions the set will be very cost effective - then you'll be ready for John Ganapes. John also has two follow-on books that are Good - More Blues You Can Use & Jazzin the Blues.
