Doug Young

More Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar Doug Young

More Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar contains twenty five well-known hymns arranged for fingerstyle guitar in standard tuning - following the same format as the first two books in this series. The arrangements are designed for easy sight reading, with the potential to embellish them on the fly to create more complex arrangements in your own style. In addition to the hymn arrangements, the book includes tips and suggestions on adding your own introductions and endings as well as improvising variations. Recordings of all hymns are available as a free download.

From the author's Introduction:

As with other books in this series, the arrangements in this book are meant to be easy to play, easy to read, and most of all, easy to extend. There are two basic approaches to playing fingerstyle arrangements: memorize every note of an intricate piece and play it the same way every time, or start with an outline of the tune, and improvise variations. The first approach has the advantage that the notes are worked out ahead of time, but takes work to memorize. The music may also get stale over time, since everything is locked in. With the second approach, memorization is easier (or maybe even unnecessary), and you can continually explore new variations, making the music more fun to play, and maybe more fun to listen to.

Hymns work well for the second approach, because there are so many hymns, and people are likely to request their favorites, particularly for special services. It would be difficult to maintain a large enough repretroire of complex arrangements to cover all situations. The arrangements in this book are designed to be pulled out at a moment's notice, allowing you to perform with minimal preparation. These sketches are similar to those found in "fake books," but designed for solo fingerstyle guitar. Jazz fake books are typically limited to just chord names and perhaps melody. These arrangements provide a bit more than that - basically easy-to-play arrangements with no complicated parts that are designed to be extended on the fly.

Songs:

At the Cross
Christ the Lord is Risen Today
Crown Him With Many Crowns
God Will Take Care of You
Great is Thy Faithfulness
Have Thine Own Way, Lord
He's Got the Whole World in His Hands
I Love to Tell the Story
I Need Thee Every Hour
I Surrender All
It is Well With My Soul
My Faith Looks Up to Thee
Nearer My God to Thee
O How I Love Jesus
Onward Christian Soldiers
Rock of Ages
Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us
Softly and Tenderly
Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus
Take Time to be Holy
'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus
Trust and Obey
When I Survey the Wondrous Cross
When the Roll is Called Up Yonder
When We All Get to Heaven