Do you have this out-of-print book?

[EllaMom]

Hi all. If you're like me, you probably have a veritable library of guitar books, many of which you no longer need.

I'm looking for The Chord Solo Book by Bill Munday. It's long out of print and I have been unable to locate a used copy anywhere (ebay, Abe's, Powell's, etc.).

If you by chance have a copy you are willing to part with, please PM or email me.

This book, I'm told, does an EXCELLENT job of explaining the things I am trying to learn, as I described in another thread here that I started the other day on playing solo fingerstyle instrumental.

Thanks!

[rick-slo]

Don't have a source for that book but I do think Almeida's books of popular music have good arrangements

https://www.amazon.com/Laurindo-Alme.../dp/0769256465

https://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-...dp/0769202012/

Also various good arrangements are available on the internet.
Try adding pdf to your google searches. For example

http://www.guitare-jazz-blues-rock.c...your-Smile.pdf

[EllaMom]

Thanks, Derek, for the tips. I do have one of the music songbooks you listed. Unfortunately, it doesn't include tab, and at this point at least, is pretty challenging for me. Someday!

Will try adding .pdf on a search.

[tbeltrans]

The book is "The Chord Solo Book" by Bill Munday and Ralph Higgins. It was published in the 1970s by Charles Hanson Music. It came with one of those "floppy" records with the tunes played on it. Ralph Higgins wrote the "chord dictionary" book that is recommended to go with this one.

This book does have arrangements of tunes that were popular at the time: The Godfather Theme, Love Is Blue, Love Story Theme, and the Ellington tune Satin Doll. It starts with Silent Night as a very basic arrangement.

This book is very different from simply a book with a bunch of finished arrangements in it. Every tune in this book is explained measure by measure how the arrangement was done, what decisions were made about doing it that way, etc. It teaches HOW and WHY to arrange a tune from a fakebook lead sheet better than most materials I have seen. The arrangements are not dumbed down (after Silent Night) either. They would do well in anyone's repertoire as something to play in a restaurant. After finishing this book, you will know how those other finished arrangements that Derek mentioned were made so you can do your own. More to the point, you will then know how to study those arrangements to continually increase your own arranging skills.

If you have heard of Neil Hogan, have any of his CDs, or are subscribed to his guitar teaching web site, his teacher was Bill Munday. A number of Munday's students went on to make names for themselves. The guy knew what he was doing and could REALLY teach it, which is (unfortunately) a truly rare quality. His book is unique among a sea of books and DVDs trying to teach this type of material, even to this day.

I have always liked the Charles Hanson books, and have quite a collection of those old books of tunes from the 70s that I picked up cheap in various used book stores over the years. The Bill Munday book is perfect as a companion to these.

The 70s were a surprisingly good time for well written songs. I began to realize that in hindsight, after having thought that nothing good came out of the 70s for a long time. Forget leisure suits, sappy pop psychology, and Disco, and you really do have a great collection of ballads and such that arrange quite nicely on the guitar as instrumental solos because of their strong recognizable melodies.

Tony

[Pitar]

I used no books and have none to offer but I was a child of the late 60s, early 70's. As a student (self taught) of guitar I still see that time as the apogee of good music for anyone who was lucky enough to have had an interest in learning to play guitar. There wasn't much in print to learn from save for the fake books, and tablature was wholly unknown to me. I spent my time learning with a guitar in my lap as I sat next to a turntable continuously flipping the stylus back to the parts of songs I was trying to learn. I could not have gotten any of that ear-training by ransacking books for what I wanted.

[EllaMom]

Pitar, you make a great point. Ear training definitely is NOT my strong suit. Gotta work on that!

[Pitar]

You will get your ear training naturally over a period of time simply by repeated exposure but the important point to remember is that, essentially, your skills are subordinate to your ability to listen well. This places ear training on a higher priority than the manual dexterity you seek to develop (playing skills). Without a well trained ear achieving those playing skills will be on a much shallower learning curve. We are primarily visually oriented and tend to focus that sense on everything we do. Music is an ear focus yet the eyes are given to it before the ear simply out of habit. Hence the books and all manner of visual aids in lieu of simple listening. Just a point worth mentioning. Look and also listen.

[tbeltrans]

During that period, I suspect that we all pretty much figured out much of the music we played by ear. However, a good book and using your ear are not mutually exclusive.

These days, there seems to be a sort of ego attachment to that "back in my day, we did the right way...". The reality was that there was little choice because there were not many materials to learn from. When I was playing in the road band, one town we were in had a music store that had the book being discussed here. Even as a working professional musician, I saw value in that book and still do to this day.

The book that EllaMom is asking about is really a very good book on arranging for solo guitar. There is a lot of material around that purports to teach this skill, but there are few that are really good for getting started. This is one of them.

Tony

[Bikewer]

I learne a great deal from Mike Elliot's 2 books on chord-melody playing:

https://www.amazon.com/Contemporary-.../dp/0793524148

Unfortunately, these are out of print as well and as you can see, quite expensive even used.

You might try the local library; often the inter-library loan service can come up with hard-to-find items.

[tbeltrans]

I have the Mike Elliot books, along with the second two in that series by Len Braunling that address tunes that were current at the time of publishing (pop tunes, rather than the standards in the Mike Elliot books), and Pat McGee's two books detailing his chord system, which the Mike Elliot books refer too.

All 6 of these books go together as a complete series, though I think most folks are only aware of the first two by Mike Elliot. However, the book that EllaMom is referring to takes a different approach to both teaching and end result style of playing. All are very good though and (in my opinion) are in many ways better than much of what is available today.

By the way, I own Mike Elliot's 1974 Gibson Johnny Smith archtop guitar.

Edit: Here is the first of Len Braunling's books on Ebay to show that it indeed fits in with this series:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/LEN-BRAUNLIN...-/381321603390

Also, there was a 7th book in the series that I forgot about since it is a bit different: The Nashville Numbering System: An Aid To Playing Guitar By Ear, by Neal Matthews Jr.

I really still enjoy these old books. There is something about them that is just so clear and straightforward. Even after having gone through them, coming back to them from time to time is fun to do - revisit what I know and pick up something new. They really don't write them like this anymore for some reason. Between the book that EllaMom is asking about (along with the companion chord dictionary) and this "Studio Series" from Hal Leonard, a person has pretty much a full plate for learning to create decent (not hacked) instrumental solos on guitar. The result isn't fingerstyle, so much as more like the guitar equivalent of cocktail piano, suitable for play in upscale restaurants rather than down home song circles. There is a certain element of class to this style of playing.


Tony

[Joscefi78]

I've a lot of chord melody songbooks. There's the book/audio "Building a Jazz Chord Solo" by Fred Sokolow that's exhaustive on constructing solos, it's written in notes and tab, gives measure by measure breakdowns of the arrangements.

Howard Morgen has a lot of books on the subject and a Truefire course. Here's a link to some of them on Google Books with previews:

https://www.google.com/#q=howard+mor...ks&tbs=bkv:p&*