Product Description

Legendary guitarist and educator Don Mock exposes the closely-guarded secret soloing techniques of jazz and rock giants, revealing easy ways to create ultra-cool sounding lines and patterns by substituting simple harmonic minor patterns over dominant 7th chords. This book/CD package contains over 60 music examples, lines, licks and patterns. All music is written in standard notation and tablature.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #177679 in Books
• Published on: 1998-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 48 pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent Exposition of the Usage of Melodic Minor Scale
This book displays the ideas of how to apply the melodic minor scale, through the means of scalar sequences, static chord vamp, ii-V applications, arppegio superimpositions, pentatonic fragments, etc. From learning these ideas, one should be well equipped for further exploring into the study of this scale, which is essential in jazz music.

In terms of technique, to be able to play the phrases, particularly the wide intervallic ones in full speed that Don demonstrates on the CD, obviously requires good technique, or at least will lead to the development of your alternate/sweep picking technique so as to accommodate some unusual runs within certain phrases. In this respect, the licks and phrases in this book can at times be quite advanced.

The most useful units in the book have to be the four usages (2nd, 4th, 5th, and 7th mode of the scale) or substitutions, though the 6th mode is briefly showcased as an alternative to the harmonic minor scale in a minor ii-V progression. The demonstrated licks fuse together in general a traditional jazz sound (e.g. the "Gone but not forgotten" lick frequently appears, cf. Jerry Coker's Elements of the Jazz Language for the Developing Improvisor), arpeggio superimpositions, modern runs in 4th/5th, and wide intervallic jumps. The licks are inspiring and should help build a good foundation for developing the usages of this scale.

Interested guitarist may also want to check out Don's Artful Arpeggios: Fingerings and Applications for Guitar (REH Pro Lessons), Joe Diorio's Intervallic Designs for Jazz Guitar: Ultramodern Sounds for Improvising and Steve Khan's Pentatonic Khancepts for furthering the study of these areas which the current book has presented on different levels.

Very nice supplement to scale practice
I was introduced to Don Mock when I attended GIT in 1987. He's a cool teacher, kinda' campy at times, but a good player who knows his stuff well. This book is a nice supplement to just learning the patterns of the melodic minor. In the book and on the CD Don shows some nice examples of playing the scale in a variety of different situations and explains where the scale works, etc. Though no one really _needs_ this book if they already have an idea of how to play and use the melodic minor, it's a really nice way to break the monotony of standard scale practice when you're trying to expand your playing beyond just the standard major scales.

The book is pretty cheaply made, held together by staples. The CD is held in by the staples, so you have to bend them some to remove the CD. The case for the CD is made out of thick paper. The CD play time is about 20-30 minutes in total. The book is pretty small, would be even smaller if there was no tab (and if there were no ultra cheesy detective cartoons and photos of Don in a trench coat, making him look like a character in a porno) so there's not a ton of actual content ... about 15-20 pages in all, so try to avoid paying full retail if you can.

Great Book!
This book is great, especially if you'd like to develop intervallic lines for improvisation. Highly recommended!