Nashville Country Lead Guitar
This book/CD set features 25 twangy intermediate-to-advanced solos in the classic honky tonk style. If you love the sound of a twangy Telecaster guitar, you will enjoy learning the solos in this book. It is the best classic country solos book available!
This is an intermediate to advanced book for players having basic skills. However, a brave and ambitious beginner might be able to tackle the slower solos.
The solos contain many great LICKS and IDEAS that can be used by a creative onstage country guitarist.
All solos are written in TAB and standard notation, and recorded on the companion CD.
Few styles of music have enjoyed the widespread and enduring popularity of country music. Through the years, country music has developed from the rural Southern string band sound to the raw honky-tonk of the postwar period, the Nashville pop sounds of the late 50s and 60s, and finally the overly slick commercial sound of today.
The solos in this book sound like the breaks one might hear on classic recordings by Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Lefty Frizell, George Jones, and similar artists who defined the exciting honky-tonk sound of the 50s to late 60sbefore rampant commercialism eliminated virtually all originality and feeling from popular country guitar solos.
Several hundred popular country recordings were researched to come up with the 25 chord progressions in this book. Each progression was found to be common to several popular songs.
A solo incorporating various concepts and techniques was composed to each progression. The result is an authentic sounding collection of country guitar solos through which various ideas can be analyzed.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Good, solid book
I’m glad I found this book. I used to have one of the earlier printings a few years ago and I really enjoyed it. For the last several months I’ve been trying to hunt down a copy of it, so I was very happy to see it available again here recently. This book is good and solid in that it covers a wide variety of country “flavors” such as fast single-note soloing, double-stops, pedal-steel type licks, bluesy sounds and string snapping. It’s a great collection of classic and contemporary sounds. The price was great and it came with a cd that also includes rhythm parts to play along with.
5 Stars A country work out!
I obtained this book to help with my country chops and give me some new ideas for my own solos in a country setting. Mission accomplished! The book contains 25 solos over a variety of classic country chord progressions. This book is definitely geared towards the intermediate level player – I found several of the solos to be challenging and I’ve been playing for several years. I will likely end up using a few of the solos as technique exercises as they are excellent chop builders. And I’ve already found myself incorporating some of the licks in the solos in my own improvised solos.
Like the other books I have by Larry McCabe the notation and symbols are explained in depth. The book also contains suggested listening for various country styles and instruments. The included CD contains a recording of each solo, as well as just the rhythm changes (guitar, bass, drums) for each solo so the user can play by himself/herself over the changes.
A friend just got a call to go on a short tour with a country band (not his usual genre). I will be loaning him this book to help with his country chops, and I hope he doesn’t keep it too long. Great book!
