Blues You Can Use – A Complete Guide to Learning Blues Guitar – by John Ganapes

This book is an excellent learning tool, with lots of theory and exercises as well as some cool tunes with some hip riffs. Most of this stuff is fairly easy for anyone who has played for a while, but – as with some of the other books that I have – this has given me some new twists and turns that I never came up with on my own. Again, there is a good variety of styles (major & minor blues, 9ths, dirty delta styles and slick urban licks), as well as plenty of information on theory, scales, chords, sixths, harmonies and more.

Each example goes through a complete blues progression (not just a snippet of a couple of bars as many of the books do) twice, which I like. So, the first time you can hear what it is supposed to sound like and maybe start playing and the second time through you can be comfortable with it. The sequences that they consider more difficult have a slowed-down version as well as a "normal" version. The exercises all build from the previous information and grow in difficulty as the book progresses.

I had little or no “proper” training when I started playing lo those many years ago, and this book has added a lot to my understanding of the licks that I already play, as well as giving me a lot to work on. I think this would be terrific for beginners and yet has a lot for everyone.