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Digital Download Books

The Books listed in this Category are all available in both the hardcopy and the digital download formats. All of these books, save one (The Bluegrass Guitar Style of Charles Sawtelle) also include CD(s) (audio tracks). When you purchase the digital download edition you will receive a PDF file of the text and mp3 files of the audio tracks.

To order the digital download edition:
1) Click "Add to Cart" for the items that you would like to order.
2) After selecting your item, you will be taken to the product page. On that page, under the "Format" menu, select "Digital Edition". The price shown below is the hard copy price. $5.00 will be subtracted from the hard copy price when you checkout if you select the Digital Download Edition.


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The Bluegrass Guitar Style of Charles Sawtelle (book)
The Bluegrass Guitar Style of Charles Sawtelle (book)
Price: $10.00

Charles Sawtelle is one of the most innovative guitar players in bluegrass history. His bluesy syncopated solos with the popular bluegrass band Hot Rize proved true the famous saying 'less is more.' Charles is a true master of tone, timing, and taste in bluegrass guitar playing and his exciting and innovative solos have thrilled bluegrass fans around the world. This comprehensive book provides you with a Sawtelle biography, an extensive interview with Charles, a section on Charles' rhythm style, 27 transcriptions of Sawtelle solos in both standard notation and tablature, with notes accompanying each solo transcription and dozens of photographs of Charles and Hot Rize. All fans of Hot Rize will love this book. more info
Learning Music By Ear For All Stringed Instruments -  Book and CD
Learning Music By Ear For All Stringed Instruments - Book and CD
Price: $10.00

Learning how to play your musical instrument by ear is a skill that is vital to your development as a musician. While reading music is also a valuable skill, in many forms of music—folk, old-time, bluegrass, rock, Celtic, blues, country, jazz—you are not typically going to have a music stand sitting in front of you at a jam session or stage performance. Also, in these genres of music, it is very likely that a given song that you want to learn will not be available to you in written form and so the only way you will be able to learn the song is if you know how to do it by ear. more info
Alan Munde Banjo Tunes Arranged for Guitar by Tim May
Alan Munde Banjo Tunes Arranged for Guitar by Tim May
Price: $16.95

Alan Munde is a legend in the bluegrass banjo world and his original tunes have been among the favorite tunes played by banjo players for decades. Unfortunately, until now, when a banjo player brings out one of these great tunes at a jam session, the guitar player may either not be as familiar with the tune, or not know how to play it on his instrument. Tim May has solved that problem. more info
Flatpicking Guitar Christmas - by Roberto Della Vecchia
Flatpicking Guitar Christmas - by Roberto Della Vecchia
Price: $19.95

Flatpicking Guitar Christmas: 10 Carols Arranged for Solo Flatpicking Guitar
Book and Audio CD
By Roberto Dalla Vecchia

During the holiday season, it is not uncommon for guitar players to be asked by family and friends if they would play a few seasonal tunes. Unfortunately, most guitar players do not spend a lot of time practicing and learning these tunes. For a flatpicker, picking up the guitar and playing a Christmas melody without the accompaniment of other musicians is something that is typically outside of their comfort zone. But that doesn't have to be the case!
more info
Solo Flatpicking Guitar by Roberto Dalla Vecchia
Solo Flatpicking Guitar by Roberto Dalla Vecchia
Price: $19.95

Solo Flatpicking Guitar: 10 Favorite Fiddle Tunes
     Since flatpicking guitar players typically perform and record in the ensemble setting, flatpicking solos are usually arranged in the context of other instruments providing rhythmic and harmonic accompaniment.  While those single note linear solos sound great when played in the context of an ensemble, they can sound quite sparse and lacking in texture and dimension if the flatpicking guitar player is playing alone.  More and more, flatpickers are exploring solo performance.  Well known flatpickers like Dan Crary, Beppe Gambetta, Steve Kaufman, David Grier, Robert Bowlin and Orrin Star, and others, are performing and/or recording as solo acts.  These players are adding techniques such as open ringing notes, chordal strums, chord-melody style phrases, floating licks, drone notes, and crosspicking to their linear lines in order to add a full texture and broad dimension to solo performances.  But still, written material arranged for the solo player is not so easy to find.  Solo Flatpicking Guitar aims to fix that problem.
more info
Flatpicking Essentials - Volume 1: Rhythm, Bass Runs, and Fill Licks Book / Audio CD by Dan Miller
Flatpicking Essentials - Volume 1: Rhythm, Bass Runs, and Fill Licks Book / Audio CD by Dan Miller
Price: $24.95

Flatpicking Essentials, Volume 1: Rhythm, Bass Runs, and Fill Licks - Spiral Bound Book and CD
Written and Compiled by Flatpicking Guitar Magazine Editor Dan Miller
This 96-page spiral bound instructional book, with audio CD, teaches you how to play interesting and exciting rhythm guitar accompaniment by showing you how to fill the rhythm guitarist roles of: Keeping Good Time, Outlining the Chord, Leading the Listener's Ear to the Chord Change, and adding Texture, Excitement, Drive, and Interest. The goal of this book and accompanying CD is to make you a better rhythm player, and to also prepare you to begin playing lead guitar in Volume 2 (Learning How to Solo: Carter Style Leads and Beyond).
more info
Flatpicking Essentials - Volume 2: Learning How to Solo - Carter Style and Beyond Book / audio CD by Dan Miller
Flatpicking Essentials - Volume 2: Learning How to Solo - Carter Style and Beyond Book / audio CD by Dan Miller
Price: $24.95

Learning How to Solo - Carter Style and Beyond  This Edition is the Spiral Bound Hardcopy Book with 2 CDs
You CAN learn how to take a guitar solo on ANY vocal tune!!   In the 108-pages of Volume 2 of the Flatpicking Essentials series you will be given very detailed instruction designed to teach you how to:
1) Select a Vocal Song
2) Learn the Chord Progression by Ear
3) Learn the Basic Melody by Ear
4) Find the Carter Style Arrangement
5) Learn How to Simplify the Melody
6) Embellish the Carter Style Arrangement using techniques such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, alternate chord strums, tremolo, double stops, crosspicking, neighboring notes, scale runs, drones, and fill licks.
more info
Flatpicking Essentials - Volume 3: Flatpicking Fiddle Tunes Book / 2 CDs by Dan Miller
Flatpicking Essentials - Volume 3: Flatpicking Fiddle Tunes Book / 2 CDs by Dan Miller
Price: $24.95

Flatpicking Fiddle Tunes
Flatpicking and fiddle tunes go hand-in-hand. However, in this day and age too many beginning and intermediate level players rely too heavily on tablature when learning fiddle tunes. This becomes a problem in the long run because the player eventually reaches a plateau in their progress because they don't know how to learn new tunes that are not written out in tablature, they do not know how to create their own variations of tunes that they already know, and it becomes very hard to learn how to improvise. Flatpicking Essentials, Volume 3 helps to solve all of those problems. In this volume of the Flatpicking Essentials series you are going to learn valuable information about the structure of fiddle tunes and then you are going to use that information to learn how to play fiddle tunes by ear, and create your own variations.
more info
The Flatpicker's Guide to Irish Music by Dan Miller and Tim May
The Flatpicker's Guide to Irish Music by Dan Miller and Tim May
Price: $24.95

Tim May and Dan Miller's book and audio CD "The Flatpicker's Guide to Irish Music" (116 pages) introduces the flatpicking guitar player to ten common Irish tunes and the theory and technique of Irish rhythm. The first part of the book discusses the theory and technique of Irish guitar rhythm, to include right hand technique, chord substitutions, and bass movement within chords. In a typical Irish session, the lead instruments will all play the melody simultaneously and the rhythm guitar player will improvise the chord changes behind the melody. In the second part of the book each of the ten tunes presented include a study the melody of the tune, variations on the melody, standard chords for the tune, and chord substitution variations. The tunes presented cover 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, and 9/8 time signatures and a variety of typical embellishments that are common to Irish music. The concept of modes is also addressed as the tunes that are presented include tunes played in the Ionian, Aeolian, and Dorian modes. Additional rhythm ideas that include harmonized scale rhythm, Drop D rhythm, and DADGAD chords are also presented. more info
The Big Book of Crosspicking
The Big Book of Crosspicking
Price: $24.95

During our twenty years of publication, Flatpicking Guitar Magazine columnists produced 40 articles that specifically related to the crosspicking technique. All of those articles are included in this archive book and appear exactly as they appeared in the magazine. We also include transcriptions of a few of the tunes whereby George Shuffler famously employed this guitar technique (the last three pages of the book). more info
   
 
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