If you've read other Fred Sokolow books, you'll know what to expect here: Clear, easy-to-understand lessons presented in bite size chunks. This book is aimed at intermediate players who already have a good grasp of the instrument but want to learn the rockabilly style. This is all meat and no filler. There are a TON of musical examples here, all from well-known songs. Any given page is about 90% tablature. It covers a lot of techniques and moves quickly so it never gets boring.The music on the CD is only played at a single speed. The material is pretty easy to grasp, though, so you don't really miss having a slowed down version. Some of the examples are deliberately played at a slower tempo, including a very approachable take on the Rev's "Psychobilly Freakout".One quirk is that Sokolow never mentions a key element in rockabilly: the Bigsby. Some of the songs even indicate "amp tremolo" at spots where you'd normally shake the bar. Get a Bigsby, Fred!Overall this is an easy recommendation for would-be rockabilly players. Coming from a rock background, I've had a blast with this book. Experienced rockabilly players might opt for something that digs deeper into the style.This is a pretty good primer on Rockabilly guitar. Being there is so little out there on Rockabilly, a book like this is a real treat. The book basically breaks down several of the staples of rockabilly into rhythm, solo and endings. Unfortunately no song are entirely complete but some are pretty close. What this does have is pretty much full transcriptions of both Cliff Gallups solos on Race with the Devil which as far as I know are not included in any of the other rockabilly tomes available. Sokolow, also unlike on his Elvis Sun Sessions book, appears to have tried pretty hard to get the stuff correct and there are a couple of errors I could pick up butmost of this stuff is pretty spot on. The way the book is broken down is sort of disjointed but if you work through it you will get a lot of Rockabilly foundations and licks down. Other good rockabilly products include Rockabilly guitar bible which is good supplement to this if not entirely accurate, Wolf Marshall's the guitar's of Elvis, Jason Loughlin's 50 Rockabilly licks you must know and Paul Pigat's Rockabilly electric guitar.Find a good guitar instructional book, and you've got maybe a year's worth of private lessons at a fraction of the cost. This book, by the staff at Hal Leonard, fits that bill and is top flight. I must own thirty books on guitar published by Hal Leonard, and the quality and organization blows me away. There's an obligatory CD included (I haven't listened to it because I read music pretty well) that will surely speed you along. All the licks contained are those I recognize from my misspent youth listening to early rock 'n roll and rockabilly while avoiding my math homework. Authentic, meaty, and convincing. Let's rock.So, whaddaya get? Cool bass string patterns to start, moving to double stops (two-string stuff), and Scotty Mooore Chet Atkins style. Then, chord chops, single note riffs, riffs with double stops, and dynamite single note solos. Finally, chord-based soloing. All you need to rock this town.Early rockabilly guitar players honed their skills from a number of diverse sources such as jazz and country. They did not have a wealth of rock players to listen to as guitar players do today. Not limited to pentatonic shapes, these guys knew and played some deceptively sophisticated stuff. In this book, Fred Sokolow offers a fine cross section of rockabilly guitar classics and dissects them as models of the style. Rhythm strums, back up options, fills and soloing are all covered, as are the predominant chord shapes they you need to know and the Travis finger style as well. Every section is illustrated on the accompanying CD. You can study the parts that Fred gives you and then take them apart yourself to learn their internal logic which will allow you to apply them to other songs than the ones contained in the book. This is much better than most of the instructional books available that are dedicated to this style. Highly recommended.I was recently trying to learn the old 1950's rockabilly music on my guitar. I came across a few books but i found this one to be really great. I just started the book and its really interesting. For instance it tells you what Amplifier and sound fx make up the tone of great rockabilly guitarists. It has standard notation music also tablature of the examples in the book. Even though I just started reading and studying this book I think its really a Great book to learn Rockabilly guitar.Thanks Hal Leonard and Amazon for having this book!Sincerely,Billy.This is probably my umpteenth Hal Leonard book. I know what to expect. I've never been much into rockabilly before but the driving guitar and overall style has me hooked. A far cry from everything else I've learned. It's greatly useful having all the audio tracks so I know exactly how bad I really am.So far, great! Well worth it.Its not a bad book but the cd has alot to be desired. If you know your rhythm and beat patterns you can pick up the lessons but the examples the cd gives are so short by time I'ld establish a rhythm it would be over and have to start the lesson over again. Why in these "fundamental" books they don't cover enough "fundamentals" I don't know. The lesson are short and make you wonder what to do with them.Aside from the book just being way too basic, the printing quality of it is awful. Whoever printed it didn't trim the pages correctly so they are all stuck together.There aren't many books on rockabilly guitar techniques available so one has to hope that those on the market are useful and informative. Well, this one is. It's not too technical and the instructions are very clear. I wouldn't recommend it for an absolute beginner but there's quite a lot of material and techniques covered in this book which are within reach of someone who's relatively new to guitar playing. A major plus as far as I'm concerned is the use of several well-known rockabilly' rock and roll tracks for the exercises, such as Milk Cow Blues, Train Kept a Rollin', Get Rhythm and Rock Around the Clock. This is much more fun and much more motivating than playing stuff "in the style of", or bland exercises. A very good book.Having recently decided to seriously learn this type of music this is the best I have found on the subject matter !?I've been messing about on the guitar for ages but without any direction so I bought this book to try to have some focus and a goal. It's a fun book, with lots of great rock'n'roll and rockabilly songs to learn. The tabs are clear and easy to follow.Great5 fun this book and Fred Sokolow is a first rate teacher.I found it a great help but the cdrom wasn't the best. If you want to learn how to "Rockabilly" this will help you on your way