Bouzouki tutorial recommendations?

Trad Strings
1

A friend of mine is getting his feet wet in luthiery, and we’re discussing having him build me a guitar-bodied bouzouki soon. I plan on using GDAD tuning. I’m looking for any recommendations for a good accompaniment tutorial. Specifically, something that goes through common chord progressions for the various modes, alternative chord progressions, along with some theory, etc. I play tenor banjo already, so I’m not really looking for anything that spends a lot of time on melody playing.
Any ideas?

PS- here’s a pic of the 6-string guitar my friend just finished.

2

I have the common chord scales I use in GDAD tuning up on my site as a free .PDF file, might be useful to you:

http://www.tradlessons.com/?cat=25

I’m generally using one or two strings as drones and walking chord scales against them.

I also suggest checking out Zac Leger’s videos on YouTube. He’s been a great mentor for me in expanding my playing style on GDAD bouzouki. Here’s three of my favorites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ofb7ss23Nc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsIqo6y8DbQ&

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9iYK3zMfqo

He uses a “QuickDraw” sliding capo for rapid key changes, I have one on both my GDAD tuned octave mandolin and on my guitar, highly recommend it:

http://www.quickdrawcapo.com/


Cheers,

Michael

3

Thanks Michael! I’d run across that once before but I never bookmarked it and couldn’t remember where I found it. That’ll help a lot to get me started. I took the 2 lowest strings off my guitar and re-tuning the others to GDAD so I could go ahead and start learning. I can’t wait to record some tunes and get started trying to accompany them using your chart as a guide.
Incidentally, I had seen a youtube video a couple of months ago of Zac doing an extremely fast capo change, and was wondering what type he was using.

4

I would look at Chris Smith’s book “Celtic Backup for All Instruments”. Zan McLeod has a DVD out for GDAD bouzouki as well.

5

I agree, Chris Smith’s book is what got me bootstrapped playing backup, and Zan’s book is also quite useful.

6

I highly recommend Zan McLeod’s DVD to get started on zook.

Over the years I’ve dabbled in a bunch of instruments, so I’ve bought more than my share of instructional tapes and DVDs. Zan’s zook DVD was the one that I found the most helpful.