This collection of 19th and early 20th century airs and ballads is a celebration of American music that is ideal for guitar recitals and encores. Written in standard notation only, the pieces are arranged and fingered for ease of sight-reading and specifically designed to exploit the musicality of the classical guitar. The book features arrangements of the antebellum song, “Darling Nelly Gray” by Benjamin Hanby, popular Civil War-era songs by Stephen Foster and other period songwriters, plus parlor music favorites like Edward MacDowell’s “To a Wild Rose”, Ethelbert Nevin’s “Mighty Lak’ a Rose”, and “Aura Lee”, a melody by George R. Poulton that would resurface nearly a hundred years later as “Love Me Tender”.

This collection presents 22 lyrical American tunes including traditional 19th century songs, melodies from the WWII era, and modern-day pieces by William Bay, president of Mel Bay Publications. Whether it’s a Civil War ballad or a jazz inspired tone poem, Raymond Gonzalez has a gift for creating unique settings that occasionally blend harmonics with normally fretted notes and open strings. The end result is a flowing melody/chord/bass arrangement that is challenging but accessible to the intermediate guitarist. All of the notation and tab settings in this book appear in standard or dropped-D tuning and are suitable for both steel and nylon-string guitar performance. To keep page clutter to a minimum, the reader is referred to the tablature for string, fret, and harmonic locations. Includes access to online audio of every tune recorded by the author.

This is a collection of 25 lyrical North American melodies scored for guitar solo. Some of the solos have historical themes and some are from the turbulent Civil War era. Any collection of American ballads would be incomplete without some settings on the beautiful melodies penned by Stephen Foster. A number of those are included herein as guitar solos. All solos are presented in standard notation and tablature. Includes access to an online audio.

Guitar Picking Tunes - Classical Gems contains guitar arrangements by Mel Bay, Ray Bell, Mike Christiansen, and William Bay of 36 of the most beautiful melodies ever written. Featured are composers such as J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Tárrega, Sor, Tchaikovsky, Vivaldi, Debussy and more. The works span the musical eras from the Renaissance through late Impressionism. All the pieces are presented in notation and tablature. Includes access to online audio.

O’Carolan Airs features further arrangements of the complete repertoire of Irish harpist Turlough O’Carolan. The solo pieces are generally intermediate in difficulty, and convey the beautiful, lyrical qualities of the original tunes. This book is a follow-up to Guido Böger’s Turlough O'Carolan Irish Harp Pieces for Classical Guitar and O’Carolan Favorites for Classical Guitar. It contains 61 arrangements written in standard notation, ideal for practice, concerts or recreation.

This book and accompanying online audio are a great introduction to the world ofclassical guitar. The user friendly method is ideal for self instruction or for use with a teacher. The book contains many great sounding pieces playable by the beginning student. This method will get you playing fun music right from the start.

This solo collection presents 19 iconic melodies from the American traditional song book plus 6 modern original compositions by William Bay, president of Mel Bay Publications; all selections have been arranged in tablature for the 5-string banjo in gDGBD tuning by Catalonian multi-instrumentalist and bluegrass specialist, Lluís Gómez. Any collection of American ballads would be incomplete without settings of the beautiful melodies penned by Stephen Foster, several of which appear here including Beautiful Dreamer, Darling Nellie Gray, I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, and Hard Times, Come Again No More. Some of these tunes are arranged in uncommon banjo keys, all without retuning the banjo or using a capo. These keys may be challenging at first but will teach you a lot about the banjo fretboard. The author’s generous preface offers tips on practice, performance and interpretation rarely found in tablature collections such as these, but this book has it all, including online recordings of each arrangement.