Alfred and the National Guitar Workshop present The WorkshopLive Series

Alfred and the National Guitar Workshop are proud to add a variety of titles to the popular WorkshopLive series. Designed to help guitarists everywhere to learn and improve technique and expand their repertoire, the WorkshopLive series is an exciting new way to learn music, combining the best features of DVD, book, and internet education. Each installment is a complete book and DVD package that can stand on its own, with lessons selected from workshoplive.com curriculum; anyone with high-speed internet can continue the lessons free at http://www.workshoplive.com/.

Guitar First Steps

Guitar First Steps is designed for the absolute beginner, and can be used by both acoustic and electric guitarists in all musical styles.



Guitar First Steps: Chords, Strums and Licks, by Lou Manzi, teaches the differences between steel-string acoustic, nylon-string acoustic and electric guitars. Learn what to look for when buying your first guitar, how to hold your guitar, how to read chord diagrams and TAB, how to play some of the most common guitar chords, and single-note riffs and licks.

Guitar First Steps: Melody, by Lou Manzi, teaches notes on all six strings, the definition of “pitch” and how it's notated, how to read standard music notation and TAB, the measures, barlines and time signatures used to organize musical beats, whole-note, half-note and quarter-note rhythms and rests, the proper technique for playing single-note melodies, and much, much more!

Guitar First Steps: Strums, Fingerstyle and Soloing, by Lou Manzi, teaches how to tune without an electronic tuner, how to read strum patterns in rhythmic notation, new chords, and new variations on familiar chords. It also explains the theory behind major scales, keys and the circle of 5ths, the two-note shuffle pattern used in blues, how to improvise by combining melodic phrases into a solo, how to transpose chord progressions into different keys, and much, much more!

Play Rock Guitar

Play Rock Guitar: Getting Started, by Tobias Hurwitz, teaches the basics of lead and rhythm rock guitar. Learn to jam along with your favorite recordings, play live with a band, and create your own unique sound plus explore useful musical concepts such as unisons, octaves, major scales and pentatonic scales, and the tools of the rhythm guitarist: eighth-note grooves, power chords and open chords.

Play Rock Guitar: Beginning Chords, Strums and Riffs, by Alex Nolan and Tim Quick, is designed for aspiring rock guitarists and teaches the proper picking technique for downstrokes and alternate picking, rhythmic strumming patterns using a mix of quarter, eighth and sixteenth notes, and the open chords, barre chords and power chords that are the heart of rock rhythm guitar.

Play Rock Guitar: Basic Lead and Rhythm Techniques, by Tim Quick, teaches the chromatic notes on the fretboard, the minor pentatonic scale in all keys, palm muting, power chords, alternate picking and sixteenth notes. It also explains left-hand techniques such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides and bends, classic licks in the style of your favorite guitarists, how to solo over a chord progression, and much more!

Play Acoustic Guitar

Play Acoustic Guitar: Getting Started, by Susan Mazer, teaches the open chords that are the heart of acoustic guitar playing, how to combine chords into chord progressions, and how to create rhythmic strumming patterns using a mix of quarter and eighth notes. Plus, learn the bass-note strum, the chromatic scale, how to construct a major scale in any key, how to pick single-note melodies using alternate picking technique, and much more!

Play Acoustic Guitar: Beginning Chords, Strums and Fingerstyle, by Susan Mazer, teaches how to play fingerstyle guitar, a technique that all acoustic guitarists should know. Learn about new dominant 7th and slash chords, syncopated strumming patterns, useful new chord progressions, warm-up exercises to strengthen your fingers, and the bass-note strumming pattern, widely used by folk guitarists such as Bob Dylan.

Play Blues Guitar

Play Blues Guitar: Getting Started, by Jeff Bihlman and Scott A. Smith, teaches how to play the 12-bar blues in different keys, the dominant 7th chord and variations to make your playing more interesting, “diads” and how they can make you a better rhythm guitarist, the difference between eighth-note and shuffle rhythms, and more!

Play Blues Guitar: Beginning Chords, Strums and Solos, by Scott A. Smith, teaches 12-bar blues progressions in major and minor keys, how to play in different keys using movable barre chords and transposable turnarounds, variations on the bluesy dominant 7th chord, and the sad truth behind minor chords. It also covers major and minor variations on the classic I-IV-V progression, constructing solos using the target note method, strumming both classic and funky rhythms, the difference between shuffle and blues rhythms, lots of boogie patterns, and much more!

All titles in the Workshop Live Series are available as book and DVD sets for $19.95.

For more information, please visit www.alfred.com

This is a Press Release

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