Playing The Classic Rags

It is, simply – ragtime guitar. These lessons meet two goals. First, to create versions of some of the most beautiful classical rags that ‘lay down’ well on guitar, so when you play them you are working with the instrument, not fighting it.

Laibman tries to pitch and arrange the pieces so that a lot of the action is in first position rather than high up on the neck, and to keep left-hand gymnastics to a minimum. Second, he didn’t want these arrangements to sound like ‘student’ arrangements, too elementary to be believable. While the focus of these lessons is on the ‘greats’ – Joplin, Lamb, and Scott – Laibman also includes one of my own recent compositions.

About the Actor
David Laibman is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He received a PHD in Economics in 1973 at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York. His dissertation, The Invariance Condition for Value-Price Transformation in a Linear, Non-Decomposable Two-Sector Model, dealt with problems in Marxist value theory. Laibman teaches economic theory, political economy, and mathematical economics, at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels at CUNY. He is also a fingerstyle guitarist, especially its application to the ragtime music of the early twentieth century. With Eric Schoenberg, Laibman recorded The New Ragtime Guitar for Folkways Records in 1970. Rounder Records released his solo album, Classical Ragtime Guitar, in 1980. Laibman has worked with a variety of artists in the early folk world, using his advanced finger picking technique. One notable album is “Way Out West” by Scottish Folksinger Alex Campbell, in 1963. Of note is the track “Orange Blossom Special” which showcases the talent that Laibman was developing.