Fingerstyle repertoire

nickp

Long time ago I learned classical.  I quite like rags, blues, Celtic and jazz.  Two questions.  Can you suggest sources for tunes (intermediate pref so they don’t take an age to learn), good books, websites etc.   secondly,I have bought a Rick Payne book but the tunes are so short, lacking a/b/c sections often.   What do you guys do - string a few together or what?

I am looking forward to dusting off the guitar and clearing out the playing cobwebs

ta v much

mgaw

I am enjoying playing “don’t think twice” currently, I don’t like the picking pattern in the original version but there are loads of others out there which I prefer, lots of room to make it more interesting imo

DavidR

An absolute mega mass of scores on

musicnoteslib.com

and seek out the guitar pro scores. 

Elizabeth Cotten’s music is great for fingerpicking learners!

mgaw

Rainer Brunn is well worth checking out as well trained as a classical guitarist and now plays ragtime, blues etc 

545454

I've got this book of Joplin rags - nice arrangements from intermediate to advanced, all in drop D

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scott-Joplin-Favorites-Classical-Guitar/dp/1783054409

Jimbro66

I was playing a solo gig at a small theatre several years ago when an older guy approached me at the end and suggested a guitar piece for me to play. He thought it would suit my playing style. He gave me this You Tube link to Pat Donohue teaching a version of Ain't Misbehaving.



I never did get round to learning it even though the guy came to other gigs of mine and each time asked if I'd learned it. It is a nice arrangement, not too difficult, so there's no good reason why I didn't do it for him.

Anyway, having not seen him for a few years I learned a couple of weeks ago that he'd passed away. I went to his funeral a few days ago and found myself feeling bad that I'd not played the piece he wanted to hear ☹️

Toms_Dad

Assuming you can read dots having played classical before I can recommend the following:
1. Wild Mountain Thyme arranged by Scott Tennant.
2. Ashokan Farewell by Jay Ungar arranged for guitar by John Lehman Haupt and published by Mel Bay.
3. Message of the Sea. An arrangement of a number of Celtic style pieces by David Russell including Skye Boat Song, Bucks of Oranmore and Bonnie Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond.

Roland

nickp said:

...   What do you guys do - string a few together or what?

Make up a few variations in a similar vein, them cycle back to the original. A classic example is Anji, the instrumental which Paul Simon borrowed.

tomjax

Have a look at the site Six String Finger picking

https://sixstringfingerpicking.com

Lots of well known tunes available there.

And Stefan Grossman's website has endless blues, Celtic and jazz material.

www.guitarvideos.com

And truefire.com is worth a look too. They always have sales on!

drofluf

Most of my current “repetoire*” comes from https://www.free-scores.com/index_uk.php, https://www.jerrysguitarbar.com/, or the Stuart Ryan books https://www.stuartryanmusic.com/

Stuart’s books get the most use with plenty of guidance through the pieces. 

But plenty of stuff in all of them to keep you busy 

* I think that means tunes I can stumble my way through  

Shadow

In the last two or three years most of the stuff I've learned is from Tim Van Roy.

https://timvanroy.com/index.php

He mostly teaches Tommy Emmanuel songs which can be very challenging but he tries to give alternatives for the trickier parts.

There are some easier songs eg Wheels, Baby's Coming Home which shouldn't take too long to get the hang of.

nickp

Thanks =- BTW my reading of dot's is crap - handy for rythym but I loves a bit of tab   I've had a sniff at Stuart Ryan's website so that's a good steer as are jerrys guitar bar and free scores - I also like that ain't misbehaving so there's plenty to get me started.  Just have to pick one and sitck.....ooohhh there goes a squirrel !!  

bertie

great place to start for rag  -  Steffan Grossman and Woody Mann,  they both have excellent tutorial material  - and its all TAB    not into that celtic open tuning malarky, (a bit meh for me)   but rag/bluesy stuff  not sure if I have anything still, and Im "just" up the road a tad.......... ish............  

Gandalph

For Blues and rags have a look at Toby Walker:
https://www.tobywalkerslessons.com/

His material isn't free but if you join the mailing list he has lot's of sales. He teaches you the songs plus add on idea's for solos/improv.

Kilgore

For blues there's plenty of free fingerpicking stuff from the following on Youtube as well as paid content on their websites.

Daddystovepipe

Fretboard Confidential (David Hamburger)

Feedback Guitar Academy

Blues Guitar Institute

Active Melody

Old School Blues Guitar

JonnyBgoode

If you like Celtic and blues, here's a (hopefully) useful suggestion.  A lot of Celtic stuff is in DADGAD and Al Petteway has a nice course on blues fingerstyle in DADGAD, all pretty easy to play:

GTC

Try the books by David Jaggs (can be found on Amazon) - some interesting, thoughtful and not too difficult arrangements (music notation and tab)

nero1701

Before you Accuse me from the clapton acoustic album, lots of great sounding licks, its a great one for building upon once you've learned the main structure, you can just keep adding more as you learn.

Vintage65

Short & sweet.