Welcome to Bluegrass Breaks: Guitar! This book is a collection of 23 guitar solos or breaks plus 16 introductions or kickoffs in a range of styles and levels of difficulty. The solos are aimed at advanced beginner to intermediate guitarists looking to expand their repertoire of lead guitar solos. All the solos are recorded in split-track format at two speeds and are available online. This book includes: Easy Carter-style solos with the melody played on the bass strings, punctuated by chord strums.More advanced Carter-style solos with hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides and more. Hot flatpicking solos with lots of eighth notes, played with up and down picking. Essential fiddle tunes for every modern bluegrass lead guitar player. Crosspicking solos played with two different crosspicking patterns. Solos using the real dropped D and the faux dropped D tunings.A variety of kickoffs, generic and for specific songs. Extensive notes on the breaks and the techniques used to play them.The breaks in this book are based on are some of the most performed bluegrass, old-time, and gospel songs - songs that you're sure to hear played at jam sessions, picking parties and on stage. Includes access to online audio

This book contains a collection of various mandolin solos in a range of styles and levels of difficulty, aimed at advanced beginners to intermediates. Extensive notes are included about the breaks and the techniques used to play them. The material can be practiced alongside accompanying online recordings at slow and regular speeds. Access to the online audio is included. You'll learn: Easy melodic solos/breaks.More advanced solos with blue notes, arpeggios, and more. Double stop solos. Essential fiddle tunes every mandolin player should know. Crosspicking solos. A variety of kickoffs or introductions. Different styles of back-up mandolin

The twentieth anniversary paperback edition, updated with a new preface Winner of the International Bluegrass Music Association Distinguished Achievement Award and of the Country Music People Critics' Choice Award for Favorite Country Book of the Year Beginning with the musical cultures of the American South in the 1920s and 1930s, Bluegrass: A History traces the genre through its pivotal developments during the era of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys in the forties. It describes early bluegrass's role in postwar country music, its trials following the appearance of rock and roll, its embracing by the folk music revival, and the invention of bluegrass festivals in the mid_sixties. Neil V. Rosenberg details the transformation of this genre into a self-sustaining musical industry in the seventies and eighties is detailed and, in a supplementary preface written especially for this new edition, he surveys developments in the bluegrass world during the last twenty years. Featuring an amazingly extensive bibliography, discography, notes, and index, this book is one of the most complete and thoroughly researched books on bluegrass ever written.

The first authorized compilation of Doc Watson's life and music is meant to serve not only as a biography, but also as a unique instructional book. A running dialogue with Doc reveals the story behind each tune, while Steve Kaufman provides additional performance tips. Here's your opportunity to learn from the best! the obvious rapport between the author and his subject produced a formula that fittingly captures the 50-year legacy of a remarkable musician. Written in notation and tablature for the intermediate level flatpicking guitarist with a few nods to fingerstyle technique. Includes an insightful illustrated essay by Dan Miller of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine.

Learn from transcriptions in the styles of Clarence White, Dan Crary, Charlie Waller, Peter Rowan and others. Over 30 tunes in tablature and music notation, plus photos.

Guitarist, composer, songwriter, and Mel Bay author—Jeff Troxel has been successful in the flatpicking contest world as well as being a sought-after college and summer camp instructor. In this book, he shares a lifetime of knowledge about one specific role of the bluegrass guitarist— that of accompaniment or “backup”. Beginning in Chapter One, Troxel lays the foundation for what is to come in rendering alternating bass lines, chord progressions, ornamentation, intros, endings, bass runs, chord-melodies, pedal tones, and other essential concepts that contribute to effective rhythm guitar playing. Five appendices address: Basic Music Theory, Capos and Transposition, Tuning, Guitars, Picks and Strings, and Lead Sheets for the dozen bluegrass tunes featured in the book. All music appears in standard notation and tablature with 69 audio tracks. By the time you finish reading and playing the examples in this book, you’ll be ready to jam or perform with the best! Includes access to online audio.

Of all the styles of folk guitar, the most familiar is known by a variety of names, such as Carter Family Style, The Church Lick (Woody Guthrie), The Country Lick, or just plain Flat-Pickin’. Whatever its name, though, the foot-tapping boom-chicka, boom-chicka rhythm is as ubiquitous as country music itself; it was played by cowboy balladeers, old-time southern mountaineers, Gene Autry, Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, The Carter Family . . . well, the list could go on and on. More recently, the art of country flat-picking has been raised to a higher level of virtuosity and skill by pickers such as Doc Watson, Clarence White, and the great Nashville studio musicians. Flat-picking can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it, and that is what this book is all about. Flat-Pick Country Guitar starts with the simplest strums, and gradually introduces techniques such as bass runs, hammer-ons, and pull-offs, preparing the student for more advanced techniques and at the same time teaching him some fine traditional country songs. Before he is halfway through this book, he will be playing melody breaks with chord accompaniment, and by the time he works his way through to the end he will be playing fiddle tunes, hoedowns, bluegrass licks, fancy cross-picking, and some more modern string-bending techniques known as “The Nashville Sound.” This book is a first of its kind to focus on the whole range of styles that go by the name Flat-picking. Though this book includes a variety of instrumental runs, breaks, and solos, its main emphasis is on flat-picking as an accompaniment—within a string band, bluegrass ensemble, or country rock group, or behind a vocalist (with or without a back-up guitar).

Songwriter Dave Carroll wasn’t the first person abused by an airline’s customer service. But he was the first to show how one person, armed with creativity, some friends, $150, and the Internet, could turn an entire industry upside down. United Airlines had broken Dave’s guitar in checked luggage. After eight months of pestering the company for compensation, he turned to his best tool—songwriting—and vowed to create a YouTube video about the incident that he hoped would garner a million views in one year. Four days after its launching, the first million people had watched "United Breaks Guitars." United stock went down 10 percent, shedding $180 million in value; Dave appeared on outlets as diverse as CNN and The View. United relented. And throughout the business world, people began to realize that "efficient" but inhuman customer-service policies had an unseen cost—brand destruction by frustrated, creative, and socially connected customers. "United Breaks Guitars" has become a textbook example of the new relationship between companies and their customers, and has demonstrated the power of one voice in the age of social media. It has become a benchmark in the customer-service and music industries, as well as branding and social-media circles. Today, more than 150 million people are familiar with this story. In this book, you’ll hear about how Dave developed the "just do it" philosophy that made him the ideal man to take on a big corporation, what it felt like to be in the center of the media frenzy, and how he’s taken his talents and become a sought-after songwriter and public speaker. And businesspeople will learn how companies should change their policies and address social-media uprisings. Since "United Breaks Guitars" emerged, nothing is the same—for consumers, for musicians, or for business. Whether you are a guitarist, a baggage handler, or a boardroom executive, this book will entertain you and remind you that we are all connected, that each of us matters, and that we all have a voice worth hearing.

The best way to learn an instrument is to play it as often as you can with other musicians. Trading songs and interacting with other instrumentalists and singers will foster learning at a faster pace and promote development of an ensemble sound. This play-along series encourages this kind of fun, collaborative approach to learning an instrument. Aspiring mandolinists can practice chords and rhythm, singing and lyrics, melodies, solos, licks and backup playing along with a real band! The online audio includes Dix Bruce on the guitar, mandolin and vocals, Bill Evans on the banjo and vocals, Julie Cline on vocals and Cindy Browne on the string bass. The recorded songs are performed with introductions (kickoffs), vocals and solos-just how they would be at jam sessions and performances. Solo sections in the recordings allow you to play chords and solos from the book. Create your own improvised solos or sing the lyrics while the band provides accompaniment. The book includes fifteen of the most popular bluegrass, old-time and gospel songs, recorded at slow and regular tempos for players of any skill level. Includes mandolin tablature, chords, solos, backup parts and more. Great for beginning to intermediate players. We'll jam ALL night long!

Wedding Music for Mandolin includes 23 of the most popular and best-loved wedding hits for intermediate and advanced mandolinists. • Traditional wedding songs • Easy classical pieces • Two “Ave Maria” melodies • Favorite Italian, Irish, Jewish, and English songs The music includes standard notation, mandolin tablature, chords for mandolin and guitar, plus access to online play-along audio recordings of all the songs!