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This book is a "where to" book, showing you exactly where to find any scale in any key on your fretboard. It is a professional reference tool to enhance your music library and playing that you will use for many years to come.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
59 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
delivers what it promises... well, almost,
By
This review is from: The Guitar Grimoire: A Compendium of Formulas for Guitar Scales and Modes (Paperback)
Adam Kadmon, who is admittedly a completeness freak, has created one of the most complete scale books I've ever encountered. There are several qualms I have with this particular volume (not necessarily applicable to his other ones), which account for my low rating.First, however, I must point out its positive qualities. The presentation format, while notably lacking standard notation, is excellent. It explains very well how to use the format in which the book is put together, and the author is very consistent in using that format, even when it seems excessive or redundant. Each scale section contains: Besides the lack of standard notation, which I consider a necessity not for practical but for moral reasons, the author also neglects to point out the root of each scale in the diagrams. This is a minor drawback, but it can become an issue for people who aren't that familiar with theory. Although there is a basic explanation of where things come from in the introduction, it might be difficult to grasp for a reader that doesn't exact standard notation. Another drawback is the inaccessible structure. The book is arranged into scales by the number of tones they contain, each of those sections further subdivided into types of scales that are not modes of each other. The modes are subsequently listed in each section of their respective parent scale, but not in the table of context. So this "professional reference tool" only works one way - you have to know the name of the scale you're looking for in order to use it. You're even worse off if you have to find a particular mode that is an unusual one. For example, how are you to know that Lydian #2 is actually the 6th mode of the Harmonic Minor scale. Granted you could figure it out from the name for this one, but suppose you need a mode/chord compatibility of some Hungarian-Gypsy-composite-enigmatic-dominant-II... you have nowhere to go. There is no semblance of an index that allows to find a scale and its related information based solely on the knowledge of the scale structure. The last point I want to make, is that this book is actually not the most thorough scale reference of all possible ones. True, it stands above all others in the market, but it either lacks some highly exotic scales (Byzantine, Chinese Mongolian) or calls them by other names. It does include quite a number of other exotic scales (Hirojoshi, Neopolitan, Hungarian, etc). This is a good book, but its usefulness is often limited to development by research, and the nomenclature of "reference book" may be misleading in application to this particular one. Perhaps this is remedied on the DVD or in the subsequent volumes.
45 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding instructional/reference book,
By
This review is from: The Guitar Grimoire: A Compendium of Formulas for Guitar Scales and Modes (Paperback)
This impressive tome explains scales, and their various modes, in the most comprehensable manner I've ever seen.Not only are they explained, just about every scale you could want to play is plotted out for you on the fretboard diagrams. Every pattern. Every position. Except for ummm... Chinese Mongolian??? Well, I couldn't care less what's *not* covered because what *is* covered is more than adequate. If you even know that Chinese Mongolian scales exist, you don't need this book. However, if you're a beginning guitarist who has mastered the basic fundamentals - such as how to press the string onto the frets - this book (and all of Kadmon's books) is a must investment. If you're an intermediate level guitarist, this is a must have. If you're an advanced guitarist, this is a must have. Fourteen 7 tone scales are covered: Major, Melodic Minor, Harmonic Minor & Major, Hungarian Min & Maj, Neapolitan Min & Maj, Enigmatic Minor, Enigmatic, Composite II, Ionian b5, Locrian #7, and Persian. Three 5 tone scales are covered: Minor Pentatonic (the blues scale), Kumoi and Hirojoshi. Four 6 tone scales: Whole Tone, Augmented, Pelog, Dominant Sus. Six 8 tone scales: Diminished, 8 Tone Spanish, Bebop Locrian #2, Bebop Dominant, Bebop Dorian and Bebop Major. Every scale is mapped out in every key... on a full fretboard... and in individual patterns. The keyboard patterns are even diagramed so you can see how the scale looks on a keyboard. Perfect for MIDI musicians. Quick Mode Generator charts. Scale/Mode - Chord Charts. Numeric Scale/Mode charts. You want to understand the scales and their modes and have the patterns mapped out for you so you can look at them while you practice? Buy this book. And there's nothing wrong with the books binding either... unless you regularly walk on it or abuse it in some manner such as spilling bear or puking on it. That might ruin the binding. - Alleyrat
38 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Remember those lousy chord dictionaries? Here is one for scales.,
By
This review is from: The Guitar Grimoire: A Compendium of Formulas for Guitar Scales and Modes (Paperback)
Do guitar players really think that it's worth [...] bucks to have this guy show them the same pattern or idea printed over and over again in every single key? Or is it just cool to have a thick book with nice fonts and cool looking little charts (even though they're totally redundant)? I don't get why these books are so popular. They're short on ideas and long on wasting paper. It's like the old chord dictionaries that show you a million voicings but don't teach you a damned thing about how to use them, or how voice leading works, or how the notes interact with each other in an actual progression.
If you want a better scale book, there are dozens of better ones on the market that will actually teach you not only patterns but how to apply them, how to use them to make music, etc. Check out Don Mock's Guitar Secrets Revealed books, Ted Greene's Single Note Soloing Books, or even Guthrie Govan's books are much, much better than this. Want free resources? Look up scalculator on google, or look up "modes of melodic minor", or "modes of harmonic minor", or "exotic scales", or "CAGED patterns". You'll have more than you can work on in a lifetime in 2-3 clicks. Kadmon seems like he's trying to hide the real concepts and expects you to look on page 164 to learn the Ab version of the same pattern you learned in F, instead of telling you to just move your hands up a minor third -- which makes sense since he sells more books when an insecure guitar player thinks he needs to be shown everything over and over again. He gets richer, guitar students get frustrated and overwhelmed (and poor). Do yourself a favor and spend your [...] bucks on a better book than this.
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