Hal Leonard has come out with three Play-Along book & audio sets for the music of Rush: guitar, bass, and drums. Note that each set contains a different number of songs, so I will discuss each one separately.
These three books may seem surprising since Hal Leonard has already published such fine books as RUSH DELUXE GUITAR TAB 1975 — 2007, RUSH DELUXE BASS TAB 1975 — 2007, and RUSH The Spirit of Radio 1974-1997, again for both guitar and bass. So it may seem surprising that the songs cover the period from Working Man to Moving Pictures but what makes the new additions stand out is their incorporation of PLAYBACK+.
All three come with Hal Leonard’s PLAYBACK+ audio player. This is really great for learning complex parts as it allows you to slow down the audio while staying at pitch, or if you like to move the music up or down by semi-tone, pan Left or Right (which doesn’t seem to do much, at least to my ears), and maybe best of all to set loop points to work on particular phrases or bars.
The problem with panning seems to be that the recordings are MONO. This seems odd to me, especially using a sound-alike band. I was hoping that the solo instrument would either be solo on one side, or at least more prominent. No luck. Even using VLC to force the song into Stereo, there was little if any difference between L and R.
The DELUXE GUITAR PLAY-ALONG inevitably duplicates some songs from the RUSH DELUXE GUITAR TAB 1975 — 2007. However, with 15 songs it has the most of the three volumes. The highlight for me is La Villa Strangiato; if you only know this piece (it’s much more than a ‘song’) from hearing it, you will be surprised and delighted by the titles of the sections. Many of the other songs are already in print, but not so many guitarists can play them accurately. This package is ideal to get it all right at a slow tempo and gradually work up to speed.
The DELUXE GUITAR PLAY-ALONG not only has the most songs; it also has the most options for playback. You can get the full group (no vocals, of course), the guitar solo, the backing track without guitar, and a scrolling TAB that accompanies either solo guitar or full band along with optional click track.
The BASS PLAY-ALONG contains just 8 songs, again from Working Man up to a couple from Moving Pictures. I have to wonder if this selection was chosen in part because repeat signs can be used in some verses. For example, although Geddy changes his actual lines in every verse and chorus in later music, songs such as Tom Sawyer have repeating bass figures, such as under Alex’s solo. There is NO solo bass option, and the bass is perhaps a little louder than on the original recordings. Again, panning does not change this.
The DRUM PLAY-ALONG has 8 songs as well from the same era. This is both impressive and possibly daunting considering the size of Neil’s kits, and the precision given to techniques. For example, the hi-hat played with the foot is notated differently from a strike with a stick. Again, you can leave the drums out to play along, but not solo them.
The “play-alike” band is very good, with just a bit of stiffness noticeable in the less common time signatures.
One important note is that these are three different book/audio packages. They do not contain all of the same songs, so they would not be appropriate for a band that wanted to learn a bunch of Rush songs together, but rather for individual musicians. Let’s hope that we see something for full trio from Hal Leonard in the future, as well as another bunch of songs from the post-Moving Pictures era.
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