Chet Atkins was a master in many aspects of the guitar. One of his greatest skills was his uncanny talent of discovering songs which would “work” as fingerstyle arrangements, and then using his musical genius to forge them into enduring masterpieces. National Fingerstyle Guitar champion Pat Kirtley has assembled a collection of favorites from Chet’s “Golden Era” – some of the best of Chet Atkins’ vintage classic tunes -- and teaches you the secrets of how it’s done, and how to get the feel of the originals in this double DVD.

Pat chose these tunes, his own favorites from Chet’s vast collection, carefully dissecting them and then putting them back together, step by step, so the guitarist can not only learn to play them, but also gets a sense of the feel and history of each unique selection. Pat teaches you note by note and phrase by phrase six of Chet’s greatest arrangements. Using split-screen you can study both the left and right hands in detail.

Every tune here is a winner, a true Chet Atkins classic, and each one is guaranteed to be a standout solo guitar performance piece. These challenging arrangements will provide hours of pleasurable fingerstyle fun as you learn to “pick it like Chet!

Disc One: Hidden Charm, Mystery Train, You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To
Disc Two: St. Louis Blues, Oh By Jingo and Chinatown, My Chinatown

173 minutes • Level 3/4 • Detailed tab/music PDF file on the DVDs

Review: Pat Kirtley has impressive fingerstyle guitar creds having done a stack of CDs and instructional videos, to say nothing of his being 1995 US National Fingerstyle Champion, and National Thumbpicking Champion in 1994. He is obviously a big Chet Atkins fan and in these DVD sets Kirtley has delivered up a huge serving of great Chet tunes. Volume One is 173 minutes of Chetty goodness featuring “Hidden Charm,” “Mystery Train,” “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To,” “St Louis Blues,” “Oh By Jingo,” and “Chinatown, My Chinatown.” Volume Two clocks in at 122 minutes and contains “Rose Ann,” “Down Home,” “Somebody’s Knockin’,” “Trambone,” “Drive In,” and “Alice Blue Gown.” These are classic Chet tunes and several of them are must haves for Chet-o-philes. Kirtley takes his time and explains each tune in detail with a full speed performance and then each tune is shown slowly bit by bit. The set comes with a book of transcriptions as well as PDF files on the discs. Kirtley also covers information about effects like reverb and delay as they apply to the songs.

Now if you are like me in that you love this sort of DVD lesson, then you probably have a stack of DVDs—some of which make you think why the heck did I buy that junk? and others that you go to over and over again. This is one of the latter. Frankly, lessons aside, I just enjoyed hearing Kirtley play these tunes; he plays them beautifully and gets a pretty authentic Chet tone with his Taylor T5.

So hey Chet fans, rejoice and check this out, you may learn something. Be sure to visit Pat Kirtley on My Space at myspace.com/patkirtley; he has posted some nice clips including one of “Mystery Train” from this set. – Premier Guitar Magazine