Flatpicking Guitar Solo Anthology #1 and #2

I have known William (Bill) Bay—son of Mel Bay Publications founder Mel Bay—for many years.  He was a regular columnist to Flatpicking Guitar Magazine, which I published and edited for twenty years (1996-2016).  Bill is a very talented writer of instrumental guitar music and an equally talented arranger of instrumental guitar music.  He has published dozens of books over the years featuring arrangements of standard bluegrass, old-time, Celtic, classical, ballads and American standards, as well as transcriptions of his original music.  His original music and his arrangements of standard tunes are always interesting and challenging.

In this new two-volume set from Mel Bay Publications, which presents nearly 500 pages of guitar music in total, Bill has brought together a number of his previous published works.  The first volume brings together five of Bill’s previously published works—Jumpin’ Guitar Jam Tunes, Old-Time Gems, Fun Solos to Play, Lively Guitar Tunes and Guitar Solos for Improving Technique.  The first section, Jumpin’ Guitar Jam Tunes includes twenty-four Bill Bay originals.  The next section, Old-Time Music Gems includes many familiar tunes such as “Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow,” “Cumberland Gap,” “Down In The Willow Garden,” “Fair and Tender Ladies,” “Kitchen Girl,” “Sally In The Garden,” “Storms Are On The Ocean,” “Sweet Sunny South” and more.  The Lively Guitar Tunes section includes many flatpicking standards, such as “Bill Cheatham,” “Cold Frosty Morning,” “Crazy Creek,” “Lost Indian,” “Dixie Breakdown,” “East Tennessee Blues,” “Stone’s Rag,” “Billy In The Lowground,” “Devil’s Dream,” “Rickett’s Hornpipe” and many others.  The Fun Solos to Play section includes some Bill Bay originals, plus familiar tunes like “The Teetotaller’s Reel,” “Swallowtail Jig,” “The Cuckoo,” “Missouri Mud,” “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” “Eighth of January,” “St. Anne’s Reel” “Red Haired Boy,” “Blackberry Blossom,” “The Rights of Man,” and many more.  In the last section of the first volume is titled Guitar Solos for Improving Technique.  In this section Bill present fourteen “finger busters.”  If you want to play through some tunes that will challenge your technique and help you gain better technique, this is it.  

There is a whole lot of music in the first volume of this two-volume set, but at 190 pages it is does not present as much as you will find in the second volume, which presents 295 pages of tunes.

Volume 2 is an anthology of five Bill Bay titles, including Beautiful American Airs and Ballads, Songs from the Heartland, Beautiful Airs and Ballads of the British Isles, Celtic Gems and Early Music Gems.  While this volume may not have tunes that are as familiar to the bluegrass flatpicker, there are many, many wonderful flatpicking tunes presented in this volume.  Some of the familiar songs here will be “Cooley’s Reel,” “Drowsy Maggie,” “Greensleeves,” “Shady Grove,” “Sheebeg and Sheemore” and a number of others.

Even if many of the tunes in either volume may not be familiar to you, or be tunes that show up at your bluegrass or flatpicking jams, I find that going through these tunes is very helpful to building technique and for gaining ideas.  There are any numbers of licks or phrases that you can find here in unfamiliar songs that you can easily transport to solos on other tunes that you may be familiar with.  So, within the nearly five hundred pages of flatpicking tunes, you can gain a lot of skill and knowledge.  

All of the tunes in both of these books are presented in standard music notation and guitar tablature and audio tracks are available for download online.