Customer Reviews

A Modern Method for Guitar - Volume 2

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I first came across volume 2 of Leavitt's long running series as a teenager in the 70's. I was playing out of pentatonic scale patterns like many of my rock-playing peers yet I was listening to jazz and frustrated by my inability to graft that
technique onto playing standards and modal pieces. The guitarists and horn players I was hearing were playing phrases and notes that I couldn't find in my limited grasp of the fingerboard.

The Leavitt book introduced me to a variety of scale fingerings covering the entire fingerboard. They seemed so foreign at the time, but have since become as natural as my pentatonic "boxes". The forms themselves rather than the pattern exercises are
the important things to focus on. Create your own patterns.

The books are about more than scales and arpeggios however. In fact, to be honest I would now regard the scale and arpeggio material as secondary. While the books have been around since (I believe) the 60's and "modern" might be stretching
things a bit, the chord voicings and studies however are still, in my opinion, valid, interesting and worth serious study. Most books on chord melody deal with monolithic block chord harmonization. On the other hand, Leavitt's chordal etudes
contain a wonderful variety of textures and techniques that can form the basis of a more "improvisatory" chordal technique, where arrangements sound spontaneous rather than memorized and static.

A lot has changed in terms of material available to guitarists since these books ruled the roost (for all I know, at Berklee they still do). It took me a lot of years and a lot of revisiting these (and other) books to appreciate what Leavitt's method has to offer.

This book is for anyone serious about learning the guitar well. It was my standard method in college and up to this point, I have not found a better overall method for learning the guitar. The exercises and etudes contained in the method will work many aspects of one's playing at the same time.

I really have have learned some things I didn't know in this book, it was a great read.