Blues by the Bar: Cool Riffs That Sound Great over Each Portion of the Blues Progression (Guitar Educational)
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	Brand	Cherry Lane
	Type	Paperback
	Release Date	2002-06-01
	List Price	$9.95
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Features
32 pages Size: 12" x 9" Composer: Chris Hunt ISBN: 1575604795
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Description
If you're a guitarist who's learned the pentatonic scale up and down the neck but still asks, "During a solo, how do I recognize what to have fun and when to have fun it?", then this book is for you. Its goal is to provide you a diversity of excellent blues licks this you can put mutually bar by bar to make a complete blues solo. Covers: the 12-bar blues progression, cool riffs, complete solos and extra. The CD features "Music Minus Me" tracks this let you have fun along as the featured soloist.
Customer Reviews
Creative Concept, Good Execution, Minor Flaws   2010-08-21
By Big Wave Dave (San Jose, CA USA)
Chris Hunt is a New York City-based guitarist, composer, and producer with a long list of top-flight credits and a solid educational background (Berklee School of Music). The concept of the book is fresh and well-grounded in the notion of the blues as an improvisational art. The author has broken a twelve-bar slow blues into six two-bar segments and provided a variety of examples of what you might do in each segment. If you study and absorb all of the examples, it will fill you with ideas for each part, and you will find yourself synthesizing new ideas from the fabric of old ideas. That's what improvisation is all about. It is also quite a technical workout, which is bound to give you more freedom of expression. There has apparently been some effort to keep the first example in each group relatively simple. However, the complexity curve rises steeply after that, which is why this is not a book for beginners. There are plenty of sixteenth notes throughout, and the bending is subtle. The phrasing is surprisingly good, which clearly shows that the author has absorbed the styles of the masters. Contrary to what is said in the negative review, the notation is standard notes plus tab, so there is plenty of information to work with. However, it would have been better if there was more, because there are some things that tab and standard notation can not portray. In example 3, for instance, a rake is indicated by grace-note "x"s on the pitches G and A, but the tab below it shows more accurately that they are on strings 5 and 4. You can figure out which one is correct because it can't possibly be "G and A," but it would be better if both types of notation agreed, so why not place the x's on the appropriate open-string notes in standard notation? Also, this is a point where performance notes would help. Exactly how and where do you mute the strings, and what should you watch out for (such as unintentional harmonics)? By the way, the rake is actually not on the third beat of the first measure, as shown, but on the second beat of the second measure, which indicates some sloppiness in editing. The same comments might be made about the rake-and-slide on the fourth beat of the second measure. Do you rake three open strings (5,4,3) that are muted and then drag your finger (which finger?) down the strings? This doesn't work. Not even close. It's pretty clear to me how he executed the rake-and-slide, but it should be spelled out, with performance notes added where needed. Perhaps the author was thinking, "Everybody knows how to do this," but he owes it to the audience to be as complete and true and accurate as possible. By the way, this is one of the most irritating things about modern electric guitar notation. It goes almost all the way, but pulls back and leaves you hanging just when it's about to finish the job. When you watch a video, it turns out to be simple, after all. Or not. But at least the notation should be complete and accurate. Authors owe that to the readers at minimum. The guitar used in the recording sounds good, so it would have been nice if there had been some equipment notes, which is pretty standard in magazines these days (see "Guitar Techniques"). Books haven't quite caught up, for some strange reason. It would have been helpful if Hunt had added a note to each example that said something like, "In the style of," and gave a discography. There's a lot of unused space on the pages, so it would have been easy. The blues scale breakdown at the beginning of the book includes left-hand fingering, but left-hand fingering is absent where it really counts: in the examples. If Hunt wanted to score a classic, he might have corrected all those faults, which are not unique to this book, but found in most guitar books. He might also have explained how to release or kill a bent note properly. There isn't a single source anywhere on the Web or in print, as far as I know, that does this, and yet it is obvious that ending a bend is a critical technique. Since there's more than one way to do it and a bunch of ways to do it wrong, it really demands some explanation. These faults make Hunt's book no worse than hundreds of others, and the concept and the examples he uses to flesh it out are way above average, so the book is a worthwhile investment. It could have been better if the author had shown more consideration for the audience, which is why I deducted one star. I recommend the book without hesitation.
High Recommendation -Tasty and useful licks   2010-07-14
By Leon C. Rodriguez (Austin, Texas)
I thoroughly enjoyed reading through this book! I've been playing the blues for over 40 years. When our music medium went from vinal LP's to CD's, we lost a lot of great blues recordings. These licks that Chris Hunt brings to us take me back to original feel I had for the blues a young man. Great sounding stuff. NOT just another bunch of dry pentatonic phrases. Used properly, these are blues licks. Kudus to Chris Hunt. CD quaity is very good as wel. You can't go wrong learning these 70 beauties. An entirely toneful enterprise.
Horrible, second part   2010-05-31
By Emanuele Parretti
the situaione is extremely outrageous and absolutely detrimental to my rights as a buyer. I still have not announced anything about any delays or missed shipments. This is not way to treat a customer. It is certainly my last purchase at Amazon
Recommended   2010-05-24
By Nick (Vancouver, BC, Canada)
This is one of the best blues riffs books I have bought. Most of the riffs sound real and are enjoyable to play. There is a variety of jam tracks at the end of the disk. Improvement for me would be slowed down jam tracks.
Nice riffs   2009-09-20
By G. Johnson
The riffs here are ones I've always wanted to do. This book and CD make you want to dig in and learn them. Very good.