Jazz: Guitar Play-Along, Vol. 16 by Hal Leonard Corporation (Repost)

(Guitar Play-Along). The Guitar Play-Along Series will help you play your favorite songs quickly and easily! Just follow the tab, listen to the CD to hear how the guitar should sound, and then play along using the separate backing tracks. The melody and lyrics are also included in the book in case you want to sing, or to simply help you follow along. 8 songs:

1. All Blues
2. Bluesette
3. Footprints
4. How Insensitive (Insensatez)
5. Misty
6. Satin Doll
7. Stella by Starlight
8. Tenor Madness

Review:

These are all excellent songs, and a wide variety too. You get blues, bossa, fusion, bop and more. What I think is really cool about this book is that you're getting a variety of approaches to playing both the melodies and the solos. These approaches include playing a first chorus with single notes and the next with chord melody. You'll play the melody in different registers too. This makes for an excellent introduction for players who may be stuck at the far end of the fret board. The melodies are not hard, really, except maybe "Tenor Madness", that's a challenge.

Where this book especially appeals to me is in the solos. These aren't classic solos by well-known guitarists. Those are available elsewhere. But what you get is carefully thought out and well played solos that will greatly increase both your dexterity and technique. For those who know a little theory, you can follow the lines and study how and why the musical ideas work. For instance, "Footprints" is in Cm and much of the solo is in Bb. Not a difficult idea to understand, but for a minor pentatonic player, this opens doors. At first some solos feel like exercises until you get them under your fingers and add some attitude. Then you're flying.

As with the melodies, the solos also include a variety of playing strategies, single notes, diads, chord melody and octaves. The fact that the solos were carefully composed and expertly played helps focus a learner on very useful music and technique, and not on someone's momentary flash of inspiration that maybe works, maybe doesn't. The CD sounds excellent.

You don't need a background in theory to enjoy these. The songs sound right, because they are right and they feel right. There's a lot here for only the price of one guitar lesson elsewhere.