I’m always trying to increase my knowledge and skills on the guitar and keyboard so I can get better at playing in my live band. I’ve been playing guitar for about 28 years but it seems like there’s always something more to learn. I’ve got a good background of music theory but I’ve always wanted to be better at applying various scales and modes to different chord structures. Today I want to tell you about an excellent book I just picked up called The Guitar Grimoire – Scales & Modes by Adam Kadmon.
The Guitar Grimoire series of guitar instruction books take you from the fundamentals of music theory to very advanced concepts of music theory. It then shows you how to relate this music theory to the guitar. I am impressed with how easily things are explained in the books. The explanations are easy but it still takes concentration and a desire to want to learn to be able to understand what is being presented in these books. If you have the desire, then all the information you need to learn complex music theory is presented in the Guitar Grimoire series.
As I said, I picked up The Guitar Grimoire – Scales & Modes book this week and have been very impressed with it. The book is basically organized into sections according to the various scale groups. The groups being 7 tone, 5 tone, 6 tone and 8 tone scales. Each scale group is then subdivided into different scales. For example, the 7 note group has 14 scales. Each individual scale in every scale group consists of a title page and pattern breakdown pages depicting that particular scale’s usage in all 12 keys. It includes the keyboard patterns, scale/mode chord chart, numeric scale/mode chart, mode generator chart and guitar fingering diagrams for every scale in the group.
What I really like is that the book shows these breakdowns in keyboard patterns. For me, that is extremely valuable because I learned the bulk of my music theory on the piano and I still think in piano when I’m learning music theory. The piano keyboard is more logical to me in many ways than the guitar neck. For guitarists that want to program using MIDI, the keyboard breakdown is very valuable as well since you will be able to directly translate from your guitar to the keyboard.
Another thing I really like about this book is how the author explains chord and scale structure by relating them in diagrams to the 12 tones that make up a one octave scale. There are excellent diagrams that get you thinking mathematically about how the individual scales are created from the 12 tones in our music vocabulary. Once you understand how the scales relate back to the major scale, it’s easy to start seeing the patterns that create each of these scales.
The Guitar Grimoire – Scales & Modes is a book you really have to experience to fully understand. I just can’t do it justice in this small post on my website. I can tell you this, if you buy this book and take the time to understand it, you will never regret buying it. It will serve at the very least, as a reference manual when you want to understand what you are playing or if you want to expand your current musical vocabulary. I highly, highly recommend buying The Guitar Grimoire – Scales & Modes by Adam Kadmon. It even looks cool, kind of like a musical spellbook!
