Product Description

Beginning music instruction on the Acoustic Guitar. Designed to take the beginner through the basics of learning the guitar, including rhythm and lead playing. Clearly illustrated with many diagrams, it also contains a complete chord chart and all music is written in both standard music notation and tablature with lyrics and melody lines. The companion audio CD includes Tom Dooley, Worried Man Blues, Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms, Dark Hollow, Amazing Grace, Pallet On Your Floor, Way Downtown, Wabash Cannonball, and others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31336 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-10
• Binding: Paperback
• 74 pages

Review
"Absolutely the best instructional product for the guitar that I have ever seen" -- Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, November 1998

About the Author
Bert Casey has been a professional performer and teacher in the Atlanta area for over 25 years. Bert plays several instruments (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, mandolin, banjo, and flute) and has written 5 books (Acoustic Guitar Primer, Electric Guitar Primer, Bass Guitar Primer, Mandolin Primer, and Flatpicking Guitar Songs) and has made four videos (Introduction to Acoustic Guitar, Introduction to Electric Guitar, Introduction to Bass Guitar, and Introduction to Mandolin Video ). He is a professional instructor at ABC Music, which he owns, and also records extensively in his studio, where he has done the sound track to several movies. He performed several years with Home Remedy and is currently performing in the Atlanta area with his band Blue Moon.

Customer Reviews

Great intro to Country and Bluegrass Flatpicking.
I've been fooling around with the guitar off and on for 25 years. After all that time I still consider myself a beginner. This summer I was having another "serious" go at playing when I bought Casey's book on the recommendation of a guitar shop owner. One of my problems is that I know the intro and "signature" lick of many songs, but when asked to perform for friend and family, I just didn't have a repertoire of complete songs (either standards that everyone can sing-along with or instrumentals that stand on their own). Casey's book has solved this problem, the first dozen or so pages are pretty basic, but then things get interesting. Casey has excellent (yet simple) arrangements of traditional bluegrass and country songs that make great additions to one's repertoire while also teaching playing techniques: alternating base, bass runs between chord changes, combining hammer-ons and pull-offs with strumming, etc. They are easy enough for the beginner to play while having enough fancy licks to impress non-players with your chops. The included CD has all songs at slow and performance tempos to help with learning the songs. Some of my particular favorites are "Rolling in my Sweet Baby's Arms", "Sitting on top of the World", and "Wabash Cannonball". I've been having a lot of fun with this book for the past couple of months. The information in this book is also available on Video and DVD, which I am considering buying.

Great Acoustic intro book
Bert Casey is an excellent guitar instructor. If you use this book in conjunction with the video or DVD you'll get a pretty comprehensive understanding of acoustic guitar techniques. Casey uses classic songs like "In the Pines", "Going Down that Road Feeling Bad", "Banks of the Ohio" (and more) to effectively teach you how to play. The video is great for those who would profit from visual demonstration.

There is also a follow up book that has recently become available that goes into even more depth. But this book/CD should keep you busy for a while.

Excellent guitar instruction for self-study
I had difficulty finding guitar instructors in my area for the first 18 months of owning a guitar, so I turned to Bert Casey's 2 volume series: Acoustic Guitar Primer, and Acoustic Guitar Part 2. These are extremely well done and easy to follow, and each lesson builds nicely on the previous ones, so that by the end of Book 1 you know several chords and techniques such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, and particularly country bass runs The only drawback is that most of the material in book 1 is traditional or folk songs, which doesn't necessarily hold my interest as well as rock or blues, but this is a relatively minor criticism. I found the DVD somewhat helpful, but a bit distracting. Listening to the CDs included with the books helps focus one more on the feel of the strings and the sounds, instead of encouraging one to look at what the left hand is doing.