This programme is for beginner and intermediate guitarists who want to start fingerpicking. Presented by Stefan Grossman, it explores how to master the alternating bass style. Each tune is taught phrase by phrase and then played again slowly on a split-screen so that you can carefully see what both hands are doing. There is also footage of some of the great fingerstyle players such as Rev. Gary Davis, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Merle Travis, Brownie McGhee, Elizabeth Cotten, John Jackson, Pink Anderson and Doc Watson.

The first volume in a series of lessons exploring various fingerstyle blues guitar styles and techniques. In this lesson, Stefan Grossman demonstrates alternating and monotonic bass techniques, blues slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs, and blues slurred notes.

Contemporary acoustic fingerstyle blues encompasses a wide variety of styles, techniques and sounds. In this lesson, Stefan Grossman teaches four multi-sectioned blues instrumentals that are bases on traditional techniques, blues piano ideas, single-string melodic guitar licks and horn styled solos. The music varies from a piano styled boogie to a slow country blues reminiscent of the playing of Blind Blake and Jelly Roll Morton to a New Orleans blues in the style and feel of Ray Charles and Snooks Eaglin. A detailed tab/music booklet is included as a PDF file on the DVD.

Featuring John Fahay, Jorma Kaukonen, John Renbourn, Stefan Grossman, Pierre Bensusan, Martin Simpson and Bob Brozman.
The seven fingerstyle guitarists you are about to watch have all put their own, highly personal stamp on the instrument, not only by the way they play, but also by the music they write and interpret and the emotions and images their music invokes. No other instrument has found such a vast, global audience in the last 40 years, and as you'll see and hear, no other instrument is capable of such a diverse range of sounds and styles. As divergent as these performances are, the personal backgrounds of these highly creative and influential musicians are interwoven by the mentors who inspired and guided them, their influence on each other, and by the events which have become a part of modern musical history.