Renaissance & Baroque Music for 2 Guitars (Music Minus One (Numbered)) Paperback – November 1, 2006

THIS is how a duet book should be done. Or any book of classical guitar music. Seriously! Best, most thoughtfully made one I've come across - and that's stacking it up against some nice Frederick Noad books I dearly love like his Renaissance anthology.For once, somebody mentally put themselves in the shoes of the person using their book!Very considerate decisions like:--giving a click count-in to start the song (excellent for playing along)--in the sheet music it tells you how many clicks before the song starts--hard-panned left/right for the two parts so you can isolate and play along with just one part while playing along with the other. This is a huge failing on the part of books like the Frederick Noad Renaissance book which has some beautiful arrangements the customer unfortunately doesn't get to fully enjoy with their CD because they didn't pan the parts hard left/right.--Pretty steady tempo on the recordings. Sometimes people want to show how "artistic" they can be with a bunch of rubato nonsense. (looking at you Noad anthology guys) These guys keep a pretty steady tempo so you can actually play along and enjoy the music - the very point of buying the book, being a musician, being alive and breathing and all that.--very nice notation on the music. I like to be inundated, nay, slathered with notation when it comes to guitar music. If I don't like a particular fingering I have no qualms writing in my own fingering but I want to know how the author played their arrangement. Common courtesy! Awesome job - let people get to the music.--nice arrangements--My Lord Willoughby's Welcome Home. When I saw that in there I let out a huge CSI Miami "YEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!"Now, it's true the songs are played at a good clip - HOWEVER many audio players (including windows media player) on computer and smartphone have variable-speed playback. Admittedly, sometimes audio quality is not best when doing a slow playback, but so what, this is just a tool you use as you work your way up to full speed. If you want smooth playback on your computer you can always get something like Reaper or the starter version of StudioOne which do a bit better job of altering speed without a lot of distortion - maybe a bit like getting the Death Star for commuting to work in that the solution is a bit of overkill but those two would definitely do the job. And with a little work, you can learn how to record yourself and play along with that, which really is a little more fun.Really, really nice technically good, considerate, thoughtful, good job!I only hope they come out with another book with just (new!) renaissance song arrangements. The baroque stuff gave me suzuki flashbacks from when I was in that program from like 3-14 and they tried to make me a human tape recorder so eh, not so crazy about that, but those who can't relate to my experience shouldn't have any problems... great book!

The score is handwritten, but it's still pretty clear to read. It would have been better to not have a "Printed" score though instead of a handwritten one.I like that a lot of fingering is written in.The music is wonderful. Some of the music is fast tempo. Too bad that it doesn't also come with a slower practice CD like some other Music minus One stuff.Overall though, this is a good buy. I like it a lot -- both the CD and the music. I play along with the CD quite often and get a lot of use of it.