“Musical thinking is shaped by the instrument you use. Whatever your instrument is, certain musical ideas are rendered easy to play because of the instrument’s design, while other musical ideas are more difficult to achieve. You could call this an instrument’s idiom. For that reason, some musical ideas might not even occur to us as guitarists while being completely obvious to players of a different instrument. In this way there is tremendous value in studying the playing of other instrumentalists.

This book is an effort to explore some of that broader “ragtime” tradition and revisit the idea of ragtime guitar. With a few exceptions, the repertoire in this book is taken from piano-based music of the ragtime and early jazz eras that I have arranged for fingerstyle guitar. It is my hope that these arrangements will be fun and challeng­ing to play. My greatest hope however is that these will serve as examples of how to look for new musical ideas and bring them to the fretboard.

I have also included downloadable audio files of my playing of each arrangement. Accompanying each tune are historical backgrounds on the tune, and my thoughts on the process of arranging for the guitar.

Hopefully that these arrangements will be fun and challenging to play and will serve as examples of how to look for new musical ideas and bring them to the fretboard. If a guitar player can learn to do that, then the whole world of music will become available to them.” – Clinton Davis

Titles include Harlem Strut, Magnetic Rag, Maple Leaf Rag, Mule Walk, The Pearls, Turkey in the Straw, Good Gravy Rag, Honey Hush, Lonesome Blues and Moonlight Cocktail

Level 3 • 72 pages • Direct download link to audio files.