Teach Yourself Bluegrass Banjo Book/Online Audio [With CD]

by Tony Trischka

(Music Sales America). Teach yourself authentic bluegrass banjo with this book and audio pack. The book contains clear instructions on the basics: right- and left-hand techniques, solos, backup, personal advice on performance, and much more, as well as a complete selection of the best bluegrass songs to learn from. The audio contains recordings of the examples contained in the book and backing tracks for several songs. Written by Tony Trischka, one...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0825603234
• ISBN13: 9780825603235
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 9.0" x 11.9"

Customer Reviews

Nice book but go slow

This is a good book. Regardless of the other reviews, I didn't think the vocals were as bad as I expected. The book provides good instruction. As a guitar player, the transition was still tricky. Make sure you go slow and don't try to go through the book too fast. For the songs and exercises, start with a slow tempo to get the finger picking pattern, then speed up.

A good book, but not quite for the novice

This is a good book, but is a little bit more advanced than someone would need with no previous playing experience. I found myself getting frustrated easily trying to keep up with the book. A better book for the true beginner would be Banjo Primer, by Geoff Hohwald. I have reviewed Banjo Primer in detail over there. Tony Trischka's book will be of value to me at some point because it contains an excellent collection of songs, but I doubt I will look at it until I've got a month or two of lessons underneath my belt.

It works, it's just not very exciting to begin with.

Using this book I learnt to play a pretty fast and deft version of bluegrass yardstick Cripple Creek within four months, practicing for less than an hour a day - so it must work! The first two months weren't much fun, slogging thorough a hundred different versions of the same two tunes. But it picked up half way through, when real music was introduced and it became gratifying to play and improve. One thing I should mention, everyone's been complaining that this CD's got (awful) vocals and guitar tracks masking the banjo (the very reason they bought it). This is true, it's pretty distracting. However, I ripped my version to MP3 to listen to in on my PC, and to allow me to loop small pieces easily etc (much easier than scanning on a CD player by the way). Anyway, I found out that most tracks have the banjo playing through one speaker and the guitar/vocals playing through the other. Just tip the balance of the speakers 100 % left and you've got isolated banjo track. I suppose it works for a normal hi-fi too. At least that worked for the copy of the book I bought in a music shop in Australia.