Product Description

The most comprehensive and complete scale book written especially for the guitar. Divided into four main sections: 1) Fretboard Visualization, the breaking down of the whole into parts; 2) Scale Terminology - a thorough understanding of whole and half steps, scale degrees, intervals, etc.; 3) Scales And Modes - the rear of the book covers every scale you will ever need with exercises and applications; 4) Scale To Chord Guide - ties it all together, showing what scale to use over various chords.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #225038 in Books
• Published on: 1984-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 136 pages

Customer Reviews

Odd layout, lots of typos, but it does have everything.
There are countless numbers of scale books out there, and some are much more informative than others. For example, a scale book might boast "Learn 36 scales" on the front cover, but when you open it, it's just the same major, minor or pentatonic scale pattern transcribed to each of the 12 keys! That's really only THREE scales, not 36. Ron Middlebrook's book, however, does in fact show you the patterns for many, many different scales. Additionally, it has sections on arpeggios and studying the fretboard. The book was written for guitar players, but as a bass player I still found it very informative. Three features I especially love, and which seem to set this book apart from the rest, are 1) the list of 12-bar blues progressions, listed in increasing complexity. These are excellent for improvised jamming, soloing, creating walking bass lines, or just coming up with better progression ideas 2) A handy table showing every type of chord, the chord's symbol, how it's constructed, and which scales "fit" 3) a listing of "Foreign and Exotic Scales" from all different cultures. I am not giving it a full 5 stars because some of the layout is just plain strange. There are a number of typos, fragmented sentences, randomly placed advice quotes, and poorly worded descriptions. I find it ridiculous that these were never corrected after so many editions. Never the less, scales are such a fundamental part of music theory and learning how to jam along with others. I'm a total scale enthusiast, and this is the most complete book of its kind that I've ever found.

My Guitar Instructor Recommended It To Me
On the first day of the first lesson, my instructor gave me a photocopied page with the "CAGED" system on it. When I asked where this came from, he showed me this book. I went out and bought it and never looked back. It isn't a book for absolute beginners BUT the CAGED system is by far - in my not-so-humble opinon - the BEST way to learn scales and modes as they focus on the way the guitar is laid out as well as giving you a complete set of fingering patterns. I started playing in 1988 and all of the books at that time were like Mel Bay oriented which required you to read notation. This was more tablature oriented with a solid understanding of the fundamentals of patterns. My instructor would say, "Learn the pattern and you've learned all of the scales". Because all you do is start at the root not and play the pattern to the next root note and you're there.

I was able to fly solo (with about 4 hours of practice each day) within about six months and played with my first band. There are other books I bought after this such as The Heavy Guitar Bible, Be Dangerous On Rock Guitar, some fake books, a couple of tablature magazines, and even a Mel Bay Jazz Scales book (the latter I didn't need since I had picked up on all of the scale patterns from this book) and that all helped to round out my education.

Years later when I took lessons again, I discovered from my new teacher (in another state) that he too had an affection for this book and loved the CAGED system.

If you want a simple, easy way to solo, learn the patterns in this book. You'll learn about Arpeggios and after you've mastered the Major scale patterns, the Whole Tone, Dimished, Augmented, Pentatonic, BeBop, etc., is simple - less notes and a minor variation of the pattern.

What's more, you can learn a simple, quick, and easy way to play the Modes with using just one pattern as an example. You're just starting on a different note.

Why sit and bash your skull against a wall trying memorize W-W-H-W-W-W-H (and it's variations)??? You can learn all of the scales & modes you want by simply learning some patterns. After that, to go into a new key, just shift the pattern either upwards or downwards on the neck of the guitar!

Yeah it' THAT simple!

Not for Beginners
This book is a reference/exercise book covering musical theory relating to modes and scales, written for upper-intermediate to advanced guitar players. It is divided into 3 main sections: fretboard visualization (summarizing different systems for visualizing/fingering the fret board); scale terminology; and scales and modes. At the end of the book is a guide for matching scales to chords.

The tone of the book is ironically summed up at the beginning of the text in a list entitled "General Notes," where we read: "2. The words scale and mode mean the same thing. 3. Accuracy not speed is important." For a book that starts out by emphasizing the importance of accuracy, it's too bad there are so many problems in accurate presentation of the material. It's not that the material itself is inaccurate, but that the presentation is quite careless, so inaccuracies such as "scale and mode mean the same thing" are very common. The intended meanings of such statements may make sense on some level, but the copy-editing is often so poor that it's hard to decipher the intended meaning from what's written on the page.

Although the title of the book contains the word "Beginning," this book is by no means a beginner's book. The second exercise of the book asks the reader to improvise over a chord progression that includes such chords as A7+5, while providing no chord diagrams. If your chord repertoire doesn't already include such chords, you'll need to do some more study elsewhere before you'd be ready to tackle this book. I would venture that this book might be useful for first or second college music majors interested in jazz guitar, or perhaps for some advanced home-schoolers who are fascinated with music theory on guitar.

I found the comparison of fret board visualization systems quite interesting. The information provided in this book is not enough to really make use of the different systems, but it does provide some ideas of varying ways to use the fret board and where to look for more information. I was particularly interested in learning more about the "Greek" modes covered in this book. I had played a simple tune in the Carnatic (South Indian) raga of Kalyani for a friend. After listening to the piece, the friend told me that it was in Lydian mode. "Lydia who?" I asked, and that was the beginning of my search for more information about modes and how they correspond to ragas. I was quite excited to find this book, since it was the first one I saw that implied it was for beginners and covered the "Greek" modes. However, the definitions given for "mode" in this book are quite disappointing in their lack of accuracy (see the description give above, or on another page, we read "A mode is formed simply by taking a scale, such as the `C' Major scale, and instead of starting on the note C, you start from anv [sic] other note in the scale and play up to the SAME note an octave higher.") All the common "Greek" modes are included in this book, together with their interval patterns, scales, and fingering. In application notes, the author lists which chords tend to go with each mode, and provides some chord progressions for improvisation practice with the mode. I was also curious about what types of music might make use of the "Greek" modes, and any affective notions associated with the modes, but such information was not mentioned.

The book covers pentatonic scales in some detail, as well as seven-tone scales. While the author makes admirable references to the modes used in other cultures, with the level of detail presented here, he can really only touch on some of the possibilities. For instance, in his list of foreign scales, he lists just one scale as "Hindu", (corresponding to Keeravani in the Carnatic system), without mentioning the other 71 commonly used foundation modes of South Indian music. Implicit in the text (although befuddled in the presentation) is the notion that modes are characterized by interval patterns, and that each mode can be played out in each of the different keys. The text includes spell-outs of each mode in all 12 keys, leaving me very glad that I first approached this material from Indian music theory, in which the interval patterns themselves are primary and their spell-out in specific keys is trivial. In sum, this book contains some interesting material about scales and modes for guitar players, but it's a less than ideal introduction to the topic.