Grateful dead guitare: Guitar Anthology

The Grateful Dead are not Led Zeppelin or Van Halen. The only reason I point out something so incredibly obvious is that for guitar players, finding accurate transcriptions of the Dead's guitar work can be frustrating. Bands like Van Halen were - apart from some studio overdubs - singular guitar attacks. This is why they are so popular with beginning guitar players (not to take anything away from how great those bands are....I'm sure you follow my drift). This is likely what made VH, Zep, Sabbath, etc. monthly features in guitar magazines. Numerous publications pore over their material to a redundant degree. Grateful Dead? Not so much. In this sense, a book like this is long overdue.What makes the Dead interesting is that, at their heart, they are an improvisational band. Delving into their recordings, one finds that the styles of Garcia and Weir, while highly complementary, are quite different.While I appreciate the Grateful Dead, I've never been an aficionado (always had a soft spot for Mars Hotel & Live Reckoning though). I'm playing in a band who all adore the Dead, however, so I am often tasked with learning their material. While many guitar players will utilize their own improvisational approach in learning the Dead's songs (in the spirit of the band itself), I am a precision player and strive to learn the songs as true to the originals as I can. It is my way of paying respect to what the band did, what their fans may expect and my own method of learning new styles (I've a new appreciation for Bob Weir for sure). Doing this by ear has always been rather tricky for me given the lexicon of chord voicings impressively utilized by Weir, mainly. His tracks are often less prominent than Garcia's, and often plain difficult to discern given the harmonic interplay between the two. In other words, when multiple guitar parts are combined, like vocal harmonies, it can be tricky to make out the individual parts by ear with accuracy. The original mix often buries the nuance of each as well.The good news is that this book delivers in a huge way, although I'm sure will disappoint some by what is NOT included. What is here (which is substantial, btw) is extremely accurate, including transcriptions for each guitar track (sometimes up to four at a time). The versions included are:1. St. Stephen (Aoxomoxoa)2. Box of Rain (American Beauty)3. Friend of the Devil (American Beauty)4. Ripple (America Beauty - note: this, unfortunately, does not include the mandolin part transcribed for guitar as I've seen elsewhere)5. Sugar Magnolia (American Beauty)6. Truckin' (American Beauty)7. Casey Jones (Workingman's Dead)8. Dire Wolf (Workingman's Dead - includes steel guitar transcribed for standard guitar. Very nice!)9. Uncle John's Band (Workingman's Dead)10. Bertha (Grateful Dead aka Skull & Roses)11. China Cat Sunflower (Europe '72)12. Ramble On Rose (Europe '72)13. I Know You Rider (Europe '72)14. Sugaree (Europe '72 Vol. 2)15. Eyes of the World (Wake of the Flood)16. Franklin's Tower (Blues for Allah)17. Fire on the Mountain (Shakedown Street)18. Shakedown Street (Shakedown Street)19. Althea (Go to Heaven)20. Touch of Grey (In the Dark)

Great book I get the feeling that the Dead don't have much of a UK following but I got into them a couple of years ago and haven't looked back since, everytime I get back into listening to them they always surprise me with their back catalogue, songs like Touch of Grey, Uncle Johns Band, Friend of the Devil among some others I've been getting into like St. Stephen for example are the reasons I got this book. The tab feels really accurate, I did get one about a year ago which was an easy guitar book but it really surprised myself, was my own fault really as I didn't look into it and had no reason to play songs like Touch of Grey as all their parts were either simplified or not fully tabbed out.Either way cut to the chase it's a great book, I've only been playing a few songs in it but everything I've played feels incredibly accurate, I'm nowhere near the level of Garcia (obviously the guy was a one in a million) great tab, does feel a bit heavily detailed sometimes but I guess that's never a bad thing, is a hundred times better than my other book and probably the best thing to an accurate Dead guitar tab book for electric players. Only song I would have liked to have seen is Scarlet Begonias, that's one of my personal favourites but it's still great the songs I mentioned and many more are always worth playing!

While complete, I was hoping for arrangements for solo guitar. This anthology sets out 2 or 3 lines of lead, rythym and other accompanyment with chords. I am not skilled enough to arrange this on my own. So back to the drawing board. It will look impressive on my bookshelf.

As someone who can read tabs and can lightly read music, I tried my best to "play along" with these. Very well translated, but not for the beginning guitarist. A great gift for the Deadhead who pines to play this later on down the road, though!