Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar: Swing to Bop

Product Description This video lesson focuses on teaching a variety of great swing and bop tunes and the techniques needed to play them. All of the songs are well-known standards, and these arrangements demonstrate various ways to approach this material for solo fingerstyle guitar. Includes: Summertime, Take the A Train, Liza, Stompin' At the Savoy, plus 2 more. Includes a 24 page tab/music booklet. Review This is a remarkable trilogy of videos from Duck Baker on the art of fingerstyle jazz guitar. Melody Maker describes Baker as: 'the kind of guy you instinctively feel should be internationally declared as some kind of innovator's master, not only for his sheer technique as an indisputable guitar virtuoso, but for his free-ranging spirit.' The origins of that opinion are clearly evident in these videos, as Baker brings his magnificent guitar work and expansive knowledge of guitar to life. More important than that virtuosity, however, is his ability to teach and explain his arrangements and ideas. Produced by Stefan Grossman, music and tab for the tunes is included withthe split-screen-filmed video which allows for simultaneous up-close viewing of left and right hand movements. I highly recommend these to intermediate level players. There is something very special about Baker that pervades all of his work. Some artists are truly exquisite musicians who inspire, but they also intimidate other players. Baker takes a tune like Take the A Train and convinces you that it was a guitar tune arranged for a big band. Here is someone whose work is genuinely inspiring and he presents it in a manner that puts it just within your reach -- if you want to work at it." --Sing Out! About the Actor Duck Baker was born Richard R. Baker IV in Washington, DC in 1949 and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. His teenage years were devoted to playing the rock and blues bands before becoming interested in fingerpicking in local coffeehouses. Ragtime pianist Buck Evans was a major influence on Baker's developing interests, which by the time he moved to San Francisco in 1973 included rags, blues, old-time country, Cajun, bluegrass and New Orleans jazz. This variety inspired the title of his first solo record, "There's Something for Everyone in America," in 1976. During the next four years, Baker recorded four more solo records, including one devoted to swing, one to modern jazz and one to Irish and Scottish tunes, and appeared on nine others. He also wrote a book of fiddle tune arrangements and toured incessantly throughout America, Canada, Europe and Australia. He changed address almost as constantly, finally winding up in Europe for most of the '80s. He returned to San Francisco in 1987 and finally to Virginia in 1991. Most of his more recent solo recordings have featured his own compositions, an aspect of his work that has drawn particular praise from other guitarists. If Baker's insistence on studying and performing so many facets of folk and related music, from medieval European carols to avant-garde jazz, have made him somewhat difficult for the press to categorize, he certainly has earned the respect of his peers. A check list of musicians with whom he has been associated professionally (in performance or on records) would include blues man Charlie Musselwhite and Jerry Ricks, bluegrassers Tim O'Brien and Dan Crary, traditionalists Ali Anderson and Brian MacNeil, new music icon John Zron, rock legend J. J. Cale, and jug band king Jim Kweskin. Duck Baker has been a seminal figure and influence in the bringing of Irish traditional music to the guitar. Baker is one of those rare musicians who doesn't draw upon the repertoire of his chosen instrument for musical raw material, but rather finds ideas in the broader musical stream, and shapes them to the sensibilities of the guitar. From the application of that talent comes his acknowledged success at translating Irish fiddle, pipe, and harp music for the guitar. His memorable but not widely distrib