The New James Taylor Easy Guitar Tab Book

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

I came to know about James Taylor through his cover of Carole King's song 'You've Got a Friend'. The fingerstyle guitar work in the song really drew my attention, as it was a time when I was working on my finger picking technique. I started to learn more about the artist and found more fingerstyle oriented music in his 'Greatest Hits' album. As I soon find out, the album was certified diamond and had been sold more than 11 million copies worldwide. I really enjoyed listening the album, which features most of his best works from the 1970's.

Although mostly known for his singing in evergreen numbers such as Fire and Rain, Carolina In My Mind and You've Got a Friend, James Taylor is also a virtuoso fingerstyle guitar player in his own rights. His intricate finger picking style can be heard through out his songs and are not easy to imitate by an untrained ears. I can still remember listening to the intro to Fire and Rain for the first time and thought it was one of the best acoustic guitar intro that I ever heard. For anyone who's been looking for an easy way to learn some of his classic tunes on the guitar, now there's a TAB book that can teach you how to play them!

'The New Best of James Taylor for Guitar: Easy TAB Deluxe' is a highly accurate transcription of some of the best songs recorded by the artist. It is notated with a guitar 'TAB' and also features complete lyrics for every track. With this book, you can expect to learn 12 songs which are: Cooperline, Country Road, Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight, Fire and Rain, Mexico, Millworker, Shower the People, Steamroller, Sweet Baby James, Walking Man, You've Got a Friend and Your Smiling Face.

If you're a complete beginner, it would be a good idea to spend some time on dedicated finger picking lessons, as a through understanding of the basic in this style of playing will help you a great deal when working with this book.

The one thing about TAB books is that, it will only be the most useful when you already know what a particular song should sounds like prior to studying it. For that reason, you are going to need the original recording by your side as reference. By the way, there is nothing better than listening to an original recording by James Taylor himself.

Eddie Kisah is a guitar teacher and webmaster of edguitar.com. Visit his website for free guitar lessons as well as to find out where you can get the best deal for the book.

Guitar Aerobics by Troy Nelson

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Book Review: Guitar Aerobics by Troy Nelson

This book is an astonishingly good book except for the audio content that comes with it. I believe that the audio content could have been organised in a more easy to understand way.

There are two CDs that come along with the book and the first one consists of audio tracks, one for each week which plays the different licks that you require for the week. This helps you to hear them out and understand the sound by getting accustomed to it. It is important that you go through all the lessons in order to get to any other lesson that you want and this sometimes gets a little annoying.

Timing is one of the most important things required for being a good guitarist and CD 2 helps you with that by using the number of metronomes and different rhythms that it contains. Go through the book to understand how to go about and mix and match both the CDs together in order to optimize its usefulness. You can play the licks first in order to memorize them and then play the metronomes for the rhythm. Although changing the CDs again and again for licks and rhythms makes it a little annoying but if you keep your head about, then it is worth the effort.

I think that an independent audio track for each lesson accompanied by the licks as well as the metronomes and rhythms would have made for a better and more useful CD. Having said that the book is still immensely useful as is. The book contains each of the lessons along with the musical notes, the tabs and the chords plus the strumming and picking patterns. The same techniques are practiced on again and again meaning that every Monday will be an alternate picking exercise while every Tuesday will be string skipping exercises and so on. All this and more makes this book to be one of the best guitar books available in the market and I would advice any guitar student to use it.

Guitar Aerobics by Troy Nelson is a smart and natural way to improve your guitar technique and is highly recommended by myself and my friend who has played guitar for over 15 years.

If you would like to read a chapter of this excellent guitar techniques guide book click here

For your chance to get a free iPad or amazon kindle do check out http://powerfulreviews.com/ thanks.

Bang Your Head - The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal - Review

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal, David Konow, Three Rivers Press, 2002.

I always have been fascinated with both music and history and a book about the history of a particular music is just like killing two birds with one stone. I have read a few books about the history of heavy metal and Bang Your Head is the least elevating one. Of course it was a fun read, but all Rock n Roll books are fun to read. The only thing that made me bought this book is the fact that I have yet to find a book about the rise and fall of the 80's Cock Rock scene, and this book, although not as comprehensive and thorough as I hoped it should be, contained some murky information about the craze, the 80's world wide fad, which helped launch MTV to a gainful and profitable broadcast.

Towering hairs and cans of hair sprays, fishnets and spandex, groupies and backstage passes and the unforgettable Power Ballads and yes, the bands. Bands in the likes of Motley Crue, Guns N Roses, Quiet Riot and Poison took the world by storm. It made its way to the Malaysian shores and before you know it, Search, Wings, Lefthanded and May, just to name a few, became Sunset strip's little ambassadors.

The book is 496 page thick and the front cover depicts the dullest book cover I have ever seen. Being a person who normally judges a book by its cover (literally), it would have been better if the publisher opted to coat the front cover black and print the title somewhere in the middle white, I would have bought the book right there and then. The cover was sort of a cut and pastes assemble, with xerox quality coloration that I believe for the purpose of going after the old school fanzine feel.

The story telling was light; it gave a good bird's eye view of the cock rock scene back in the early 80's; the book was a fun read nonetheless but it could have been better though. Besides the lack of depth, the book was also in short of photos. You do not write a book about Rock N Roll, describe the glorious vista of the legendary Sunset Strip, illustrate hundreds of crazy ass bands and have just a couple of photos in it!

I write about heavy metal music in an obscure land called Malaysia. Help me make my writing better. visit my blog: http://www.thebulletbelt.blogspot.com/