---
product_id: 4343329
title: "Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar (Guitar Books)"
price: "€ 45.02"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.fi/products/4343329-beginning-fingerstyle-blues-guitar-guitar-books
store_origin: FI
region: Finland
---

# Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar (Guitar Books)

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desertcart.com: Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar (Guitar Books): 9780825625565: Berle, Arnie, Galbo, Mark: Books

Review: Excellent. Learn to Play and Sing Fingerstyle Blues! Beginner - Intermediate Difficulty. - Another great find! Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar, by Arnie Berle and Mark Galbo, is a method book for learning to play fingerstyle blues guitar (both solo and accompaniment). This is first fingerstyle blues books that I’ve come across that provides a great chapter on how to incorporate singing over your guitar playing. The book is suitable for beginner fingerstyle players who can play basic chords through to intermediate players. I blew through this book - the material progresses logically with exercises that build on each other and lead perfectly into complete 12-bar examples. The majority of the book is focused on playing using an alternating bass (Travis style). Rest assured, if you work through this book, you will build a solid fingerstyle blues foundation and you will learn a few cool 12-bar choruses. You will still need further instruction to develop your arranging and improvisation skills as well as your tone, rhythmic feel, and fingering choices. Check out my in-depth YouTube video review ("Guitar Books Review #24: Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar by Berle/Galbo" by Joe McMurray) in which I objectively go through the book and play some of the arrangements. You can also hear the full review on "Guitar Books the Podcast" - Review #24. For context, I’m a professional player, teacher, author, and recording artist. After some introductory material covering blues history, form, rhythm, and picking hand technique, the book jumps right into exercises to develop your alternating bass technique. Assuming you can already play your basic chord shapes, the book methodically shows you how to play the alternating bass over the I, IV, and V chords in the keys of A, G, and E. Each chapter presents a new layer of complexity (new melody note options, new rhythms, new fretting or picking-hand techniques, new chord voicings, etc.), with progressive exercises that always culminate in a full 12-bar example. The authors really did a great job in organizing the topics and calibrating the difficulty progression – the book flows well. Although the examples of the early chapters sound “major” and bland, they prepare you for the addition of “blue notes” and other bluesy techniques that add some soul to your sound and immediately make your playing more satisfying. Just stick with it through those early chapters! Late in the book, the chapter on how to incorporate singing over your fingerstyle blues guitar playing is special. You won’t learn anything about vocal technique or tone production, but you will learn about the call-and-response dance between your vocals and guitar playing. You will learn how to accompany your vocal lines (the “call”) and then play a guitar riff or chordal “response.” First, the vocal melody is provided in standard notation and on the CD – you will want to learn to sing this melody. Then the guitar part is provided, which you will learn separately before adding the vocals on top. Then the authors provide alternate “response” riffs that you can substitute into the segments of the tune when there are no vocals. Players with more experience can improvise their own riffs in these spots. Finally, you will learn a few turnarounds that you can substitute into bars 11 and 12. By the time I was finished with this section, I was really jamming out, improvising, and having fun with the example tune. The book culminates with five complete blues tunes that make use of your new skills and jump-start your blues repertoire. Four of these tunes are traditional and one is an original. Three are vocal tunes and two are instrumental. Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar provides both treble clef and tablature for each arrangement. Minimal fretting hand fingering is provided (sometimes written into the music, sometimes provided via tiny chord charts written above the music, and sometimes discussed in the text). Picking hand fingering is only provided in the music for the first chapter, although you can always tell which notes should be played with your thumb by looking at the treble clef – bass notes have down stems. The skill of choosing sensible fingering is important, and you will need to look elsewhere to further develop this skill. Recordings are available on an included CD. These will be very helpful to many readers. The book doesn’t use the modern percussive techniques used by modern players like Michael Hedges, Don Ross, Andy McKee, Mike Dawes, etc. No thumb slaps, guitar body percussion, or tapping.
Review: I'm very impressed with the quality of the instruction. - This is not a new book (published 1993), but it is exceptionally well organized and written. The first part of the book focuses on the critical ability to play a bass line independent of the melody. For anyone who has tried this "walk and chew gum" skill, you'll understand that it is not natural. The book, however approaches this indirectly so you aren't so focused on the separation. Instead, you concentrate on playing the tab as you see it and the alternating bass takes care of itself. The skill build up is very gradual and manageable. You play a simple blues using only the A chord, the another with the E then the G and B7. All the while, you are working on that independent bass. Fairly soon, you play more than just the chord notes and pick up the other melody notes within each chord. Looking back, you suddenly realize that you've picked up quite a bit and you are still only on about page 20. This is not a book you will push through in a week or a month. If you work on each lesson until you have a reasonable (not great) ability to play it, you will gradually accumulate some very good skills, but even if you are putting in a hour every day, expect the book to take you up to a year to complete (unless you are unusually gifted). It is a very enjoyable book for building skills. I just wish it had a few "break out" moments within each lesson session. You know, a short rift that sounded really cool. You could jump to it when you just can't bring yourself to play that lesson sheet one more time today. It would also keep you interest up. If you want to pick up some basic, essential old-school blues licks, this a great book for you.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| ASIN  | 0825625564 |
| Best Sellers Rank | #436,005 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #771 in Guitar Songbooks #928 in Guitars (Books) #2,281 in Music Instruction & Study (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars (359) |
| Dimensions  | 9 x 0.32 x 12 inches |
| Edition  | First Edition |
| ISBN-10  | 9780825625565 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-0825625565 |
| Item Weight  | 2.31 pounds |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 96 pages |
| Publication date  | May 1, 1993 |
| Publisher  | Music Sales America |

## Images

![Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar (Guitar Books) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91Nu9rJ1rAL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Excellent. Learn to Play and Sing Fingerstyle Blues! Beginner - Intermediate Difficulty.
*by J***Y on November 20, 2025*

Another great find! Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar, by Arnie Berle and Mark Galbo, is a method book for learning to play fingerstyle blues guitar (both solo and accompaniment). This is first fingerstyle blues books that I’ve come across that provides a great chapter on how to incorporate singing over your guitar playing. The book is suitable for beginner fingerstyle players who can play basic chords through to intermediate players. I blew through this book - the material progresses logically with exercises that build on each other and lead perfectly into complete 12-bar examples. The majority of the book is focused on playing using an alternating bass (Travis style). Rest assured, if you work through this book, you will build a solid fingerstyle blues foundation and you will learn a few cool 12-bar choruses. You will still need further instruction to develop your arranging and improvisation skills as well as your tone, rhythmic feel, and fingering choices. Check out my in-depth YouTube video review ("Guitar Books Review #24: Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar by Berle/Galbo" by Joe McMurray) in which I objectively go through the book and play some of the arrangements. You can also hear the full review on "Guitar Books the Podcast" - Review #24. For context, I’m a professional player, teacher, author, and recording artist. After some introductory material covering blues history, form, rhythm, and picking hand technique, the book jumps right into exercises to develop your alternating bass technique. Assuming you can already play your basic chord shapes, the book methodically shows you how to play the alternating bass over the I, IV, and V chords in the keys of A, G, and E. Each chapter presents a new layer of complexity (new melody note options, new rhythms, new fretting or picking-hand techniques, new chord voicings, etc.), with progressive exercises that always culminate in a full 12-bar example. The authors really did a great job in organizing the topics and calibrating the difficulty progression – the book flows well. Although the examples of the early chapters sound “major” and bland, they prepare you for the addition of “blue notes” and other bluesy techniques that add some soul to your sound and immediately make your playing more satisfying. Just stick with it through those early chapters! Late in the book, the chapter on how to incorporate singing over your fingerstyle blues guitar playing is special. You won’t learn anything about vocal technique or tone production, but you will learn about the call-and-response dance between your vocals and guitar playing. You will learn how to accompany your vocal lines (the “call”) and then play a guitar riff or chordal “response.” First, the vocal melody is provided in standard notation and on the CD – you will want to learn to sing this melody. Then the guitar part is provided, which you will learn separately before adding the vocals on top. Then the authors provide alternate “response” riffs that you can substitute into the segments of the tune when there are no vocals. Players with more experience can improvise their own riffs in these spots. Finally, you will learn a few turnarounds that you can substitute into bars 11 and 12. By the time I was finished with this section, I was really jamming out, improvising, and having fun with the example tune. The book culminates with five complete blues tunes that make use of your new skills and jump-start your blues repertoire. Four of these tunes are traditional and one is an original. Three are vocal tunes and two are instrumental. Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar provides both treble clef and tablature for each arrangement. Minimal fretting hand fingering is provided (sometimes written into the music, sometimes provided via tiny chord charts written above the music, and sometimes discussed in the text). Picking hand fingering is only provided in the music for the first chapter, although you can always tell which notes should be played with your thumb by looking at the treble clef – bass notes have down stems. The skill of choosing sensible fingering is important, and you will need to look elsewhere to further develop this skill. Recordings are available on an included CD. These will be very helpful to many readers. The book doesn’t use the modern percussive techniques used by modern players like Michael Hedges, Don Ross, Andy McKee, Mike Dawes, etc. No thumb slaps, guitar body percussion, or tapping.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I'm very impressed with the quality of the instruction.
*by T***T on October 3, 2015*

This is not a new book (published 1993), but it is exceptionally well organized and written. The first part of the book focuses on the critical ability to play a bass line independent of the melody. For anyone who has tried this "walk and chew gum" skill, you'll understand that it is not natural. The book, however approaches this indirectly so you aren't so focused on the separation. Instead, you concentrate on playing the tab as you see it and the alternating bass takes care of itself. The skill build up is very gradual and manageable. You play a simple blues using only the A chord, the another with the E then the G and B7. All the while, you are working on that independent bass. Fairly soon, you play more than just the chord notes and pick up the other melody notes within each chord. Looking back, you suddenly realize that you've picked up quite a bit and you are still only on about page 20. This is not a book you will push through in a week or a month. If you work on each lesson until you have a reasonable (not great) ability to play it, you will gradually accumulate some very good skills, but even if you are putting in a hour every day, expect the book to take you up to a year to complete (unless you are unusually gifted). It is a very enjoyable book for building skills. I just wish it had a few "break out" moments within each lesson session. You know, a short rift that sounded really cool. You could jump to it when you just can't bring yourself to play that lesson sheet one more time today. It would also keep you interest up. If you want to pick up some basic, essential old-school blues licks, this a great book for you.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Uneven but very valuable
*by D***Y on June 1, 2001*

This book and CD has its ups and downs. The CD, for one thing, is a problem. The guy rambles and rambles and rambles, and the content on the CD is poorly indexed to the book. The content of both the book and the CD also tend to zoom from simple to quite difficult, back to simple, and so on. But in spite of these not inconsiderable flaws, I knew within an hour that I really liked the book anyway. I have picked up lots of good ideas. The book would be good for raw beginners through fairly experienced intermediates. Beginners should understand that fingerpicking is like learning to ride a bike; you're going to fall down and skin your knees quite a few times before you manage to ride even to the end of the block. I think this book does a good job of explaining that, and giving beginners tips on how to get started. Intermediates will find lots of really cool, fun stuff to play. The songs at the end of the book (five complete songs) are the icing on the cake, because by then you've already learned lots of other good stuff. The style of the music ranges from shuffles to "sweet" blues like John Hurt stuff, and some "harder" or "meaner" blues. Overall, a very good mix of the music. You can tell that the guy picking the music knows his stuff and understands that he has to present a solid balance, a good sampling of fingerstyle blues. That's sadly lacking in some books. And intermediates should also note that there is, in my opinion, some VERY challenging stuff here for them. Well, I suppose that an advanced player wouldn't think so, but an advanced player wouldn't buy this book. There are some pieces here that will stretch your fingers, give your wrist a workout, and force you to learn some difficult maneuvers. And that's good! So the book won't just give you lots of "treading water" music that won't take you anywhere. If you're an intermediate, you'll pick up some things that start moving you along to the advanced level. One other positive point--there is a LOT of music in this book. Some books seem like they end no sooner than they get started. Not this one. Admittedly, there is a fair amount of material in the middle of the book that is kind of repetitive, but the point is to start simple, then go a little more complex, and then a little more, and so on. So I don't fault the author for that. It's better than going from an extremely simple picking pattern straight into a heavily-syncopated pattern that leaves the beginner bewildered. Just be prepared to deal with the endlessly rambling monologue on the CD, and be prepared to skip through the book and the CD to find what you want.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Beginning Fingerstyle Blues Guitar (Guitar Books)
- Fingerstyle Blues Guitar: Master Acoustic Blues Guitar Fingerpicking and Soloing (Learn How to Play Blues Guitar)
- Fingerstyle Blues Songbook: Learn to Play Country Blues, Ragtime Blues, Boogie Blues & More (Acoustic Guitar Private Lessons)

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*Product available on Desertcart Finland*
*Store origin: FI*
*Last updated: 2026-02-27*