Guitar Meditations: Contemplative Solos for Plectrum Guitar

By: Dr. Matt Warnock

Click to Buy Guitar Meditations from Amazon.com

Guitar Meditations is a collection of seven short pieces that were written in the “plectrum guitar” style, which is also called “flatpicking.” As author William Bay describes in the book’s introduction, the word Flatpicking is often associated with Country or Bluegrass music, but the solos in this book cover a wide range of musical styles, and are more related to the older use of the term, plectrum guitar.

These seven pieces will not only provide an enjoyable musical experience for those that learn them, but they will also prove to be excellent educational tools as well. Each piece covers a wide range of the instrument, from open position to the middle and upper registers, as well as mixes chords of all sizes and single lines, often within the same bar.

Some pieces are more arpeggiated, “Clouds,” others feature more chords, “Gentle Voice,” while a piece such as “Sleeping Child” features some tricky string skips that will provide an enjoyable challenge to flatpicking guitarists. As well, several tunes are written in a drop D tuning, which is common in many genres of flatpicking guitar, and provides a nice sense of variety between these songs and those that are in standard tuning.

Bay has also scored several tunes for 7-string guitar, though these pieces can be played on a normal, 6-string guitar as well. This is the only confusing part of the book. The extra low notes, all played on the 7th string, are only scored in the notation, so they do not appear in the tab. For those guitarists who read tablature, and not notation, they might not even know these notes are there, and even if they do, might not be able to read the notes that are written only in standard notation.

Since the book is only 24 pages long, it should have been possible to include two different versions of the couple of pieces that feature the added 7th string notes, or at least two sets of tab lines, one for 6-string and one for 7. Regardless, the pieces can still be played, and sound good, just by reading the notes in the tab provided. For those that play 7-string, there are a few extra notes that they can add into several arrangements, but they’ll have to read the notation to do so.

One of the other downsides to the book, and this is more of a personal gripe with modern music publishing techniques, is that there are no rests. In 24 pages of music there is not a single moment when a note is not being played or held over, so space and silence does not exist in these arrangements. Not to pick on Bay, this seems to be common practice with all of the big music publishers these days, but it is teaching players of all levels that space isn’t needed when playing a piece of music, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Trusting the reader to add their own rests and moments of space is something that may sound like a good idea, and make the notes on the page easier to read, but in the long run it may be a practice that publishing companies want to rethink. After all, the silence-sound contrast is one of the reasons why music is enjoyable to listen to in the first place.

Click to Check Out Guitar Meditations at Amazon.com

Overall Guitar Meditations is a collection of well-written and enjoyable pieces of music that guitarists of all backgrounds and musical tastes can enjoy. The book also comes with a link to a webpage containing free audio examples from the book that buyers can access to further their learning experience. If you are looking to further your flatpicking technique, while learning some new pieces at the same time, than this book might just be for you.