The ongoing quest for every live musician is to increase their knowledge and playing skills. When you play in a live band it’s really to your advantage to have a good grasp of general music theory. Every guitarist I know wants to be able to play blazing fast guitar licks but most of them fall short when it comes to knowing what scales or notes to play and when to play them. I’ve played with guys that were lightning fast but their playing wasn’t musical because of their poor note selection.
The other day I wrote about the excellent book “The Guitar Grimoire – Scales and Modes” which introduces you to the concept of music scales and modes as well as telling you which chords to play them over. The whole point to studying and learning the scales and modes is being able to put them into practice while your band plays the chordal harmony for them. Today I’m going to talk about the Scales and Modes companion book “The Guitar Grimoire – A Notated Intervallic Study Of Scales“.
The “Guitar Grimoire – A Notated Intervallic Study Of Scales” is very similar to the Scales & Modes book. It is set up and explained by Adam Kamdon in exactly the same way as Scales & Modes. In fact, the scales in Notated Intervallic Study Of Scales are included in the Scales & Modes book. The scales are even presented the same way on the title page to each scale. So why do you need the Notated Intervallic Study Of Scales Book?
The whole point of this book is to show guitarists how the scales they are playing on their instruments look in music notation. In case you don’t know what music notation is, it’s the Grand Staff that you see used in piano music. There’s a good explanation of music notation in “A Notated Intervallic Study Of Scales” that will help you to understand it. So you may be asking yourself, why is this important to me as a guitarist?
The reason it’s important is because if you want to progress from Guitarist to Musician, you must learn to speak the language of music. The way musicians communicate is by music notation and this book introduces you to music notation using your knowledge of the guitar as the basis. Once you understand your music theory as well as how it looks in music notation, you can have discussions with a keyboard player, a harp player, a horn player, a violinist or any other player that knows how to read music notation.
I personally love seeing all the scales presented in music notation in this book. I’ve written about how I feel that the most important instrument to learn is the piano. For me as a piano player, I can logically see how the individual tones of the scale are either raised or lowered to create the individual scales. I also really like the page where each chordal interval is notated so you can play them on a piano to hear how the two-note harmony sounds. This book has really increased the speed at which I’m learning from “The Guitar Grimoire – Modes & Scales” book.
Today I’m recommending that you pick up “The Guitar Grimoire – A Notated Intervallic Study Of Scales” as a companion book the the Scales & Modes book. They will both be an extremely valuable addition to your music library. Remember, to get better as a player and a musician you must increase your knowledge as well as your mechanical skills on the instrument.
