Learn five repertoire building songs arranged for the intermediate fingerstyle guitarist. Inspired by Woody Mann’s favorite traditional blues tunes, these easy to follow arrangements teach a variety of acoustic blues styles and sounds. Each song spotlights a specific technique for developing fingerpicking skills, rhythmic grooves, and dynamics in your playing. Woody illustrates the syncopated fingerpicking of Blind Blake, the single-line style riffs of Lonnie Johnson, the melodic playing in open G tuning of Memphis Minnie, and the unique riffs in standard tuning of Rambling Thomas and Bo Carter. Woody shows how the riffs and techniques can be applied from one tune to another and illustrates practical ways to create variations within a tune. In this fresh approach to teaching, Woody Mann has taken the complex music of the early acoustic guitar innovators and has distilled the sounds into clearly written instrumentals that capture the essence and beauty of the music. Each song chapter includes introduction, performance, explanation, and slow performance with split screen. Songs include: Along The Alley, Minnie’s Spanish Blues, Feeling Bad Blues, New Old Devil, and Rambling Blues.

Woody Mann had his first schooling as a teenager in the living room of Rev. Gary Davis, now the legendary gospel and ragtime guitarist. Mann went on to perform with blues masters Son House and Bukka White as well as contemporary innovators, including John Fahey, while he continued his studies of classical music at the Juilliard School and jazz improvisation with the noted pianist Lennie Tristano. He has recorded extensively, performed throughout the world, and is widely recognized as one of the leading teachers and authorities of traditional blues music.