Any opinions on "Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns For Guitar"?

[Optofonik]

I was a music major in another life and appreciate good academic approaches to learning.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by Optofonik

I was a music major in another life and appreciate good academic approaches to learning.

Nah, if it is adapted from book in the link below. A lot of time spent going to no use.
Take a look:
http://www.scottlernermusic.com/ftp/...20Patterns.pdf

[stanron]

My warped English sense of humour tells me this; someone's having a laugh!

It probably won't kill you but the only benefit you are likely to get is that it might improve your ability to talk bollocks.

[JonPR]

It may be worth reading this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola...ical_criticism
NB: you can take Quincy Jones' comment about Coltrane two ways, depending on what you think of Coltrane's playing.

My own opinion: the whole thing is ridiculous. It's the definition of Too Much Info. It's like learning a foreign language from a dictionary where the words aren't translated.

I remember seeing the very similar (but less extensive) Guitar Grimoire in a shop many years ago (the original one, there are many versions now), and found it astonishing and hilarious in equal measure. Great if you want lists of scales to practice pointlessly. Useless for learning music. (Not that there's anything wrong with practising scales. But you don't need a book with 100s of variations of the same scale in order to do it.)

Such books are pointless for (at least) two reasons:
(1) They tell you nothing about how music works - they tell you precious little about any aspect of music;
(2) What they do is something you would benefit from far more by doing it yourself (mapping out scales and arpeggios on the fretboard).
(3) (I said there were at least two ) - it's a BOOK! And this is the worst kind of book. Don't read books (except songbooks). Play the guitar.

[SunnyDee]

It's a reference book. In my opinion, it's not supposed to be a how-to lesson plan. Dictionaries aren't useless just because they are not the most efficient way to learn a language. The OED has more than 170,000 words in current use. Without it, just listening to people around you, you're not likely to discover more than about 20,000 of those over a lifetime. A dictionary can show you ones you never knew existed... it's like that.

I'm an academic who teaches language, especially frequency-based vocab, so... yeah... good analogy for me.

[fazool]

Originally Posted by SunnyDee

...The OED has more than 170,000 words. Without it, just listening to people around you, you're not likely to discover more than about 20,000 of those over a lifetime. A dictionary can show you ones you never knew existed... ....

I think that is a fallacy.

Essentially no one, thinks "hey, I want to learn a new word today" and thumbs through a dictionary.

Quite the opposite (I think): Someone hears a word while listening to people around them and wonders "hey what was that word?"

So, the reference is of no use by itself. It is a useful tool to aid in experiential learning.

No one learns words by going to a dictionary, first.

They learn words by hearing them in use, then looking them up in the dictionary, second.

(I think)

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by JonPR

It may be worth reading this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola...ical_criticism
NB: you can take Quincy Jones' comment about Coltrane two ways, depending on what you think of Coltrane's playing.

My own opinion: the whole thing is ridiculous. It's the definition of Too Much Info. It's like learning a foreign language from a dictionary where the words aren't translated.

I remember seeing the very similar (but less extensive) Guitar Grimoire in a shop many years ago (the original one, there are many versions now), and found it astonishing and hilarious in equal measure. Great if you want lists of scales to practice pointlessly. Useless for learning music. (Not that there's anything wrong with practising scales. But you don't need a book with 100s of variations of the same scale in order to do it.)

Such books are pointless for (at least) two reasons:
(1) They tell you nothing about how music works - they tell you precious little about any aspect of music;
(2) What they do is something you would benefit from far more by doing it yourself (mapping out scales and arpeggios on the fretboard).
(3) (I said there were at least two ) - it's a BOOK! And this is the worst kind of book. Don't read books (except songbooks). Play the guitar.

Sounds like you have developed some ideas that work for you. I'm responding to your post, but also to the thread in general, and I want you to understand that I admire that you've worked out some things that help you.

My observations about creativity, including musical creativity, is that folks do it all sorts of different ways. Some things work sometimes and the same thing fails sometimes, even for the same person. It seems not at all uncommon that people need help or outside inspiration on one element and have such a surplus in another element that it would be a waste to go looking for more.

Responding to your numbered points.

1. I shake my head at the comment about the study of scales (or even arbitrarily trying some different scales just for grins) telling you nothing about how music works. In a summary degree, I'm not sure anyone knows how music works, but melodic expression based on scales seems to have been part of human music since its beginning. So even the worst methods of exploring that would seem to have something to do with music. Some folks whose music I admire seem to have thought it was an good element to look into. They could be wrong for you or me or the next AGF reader, but who can tell?

2. Doing it yourself is better? Yes, internalizing anything you find from any source (including your own accidents, or extensions of your own study) seems to be a key factor in creativity. I'm reminded of a favorite saying: We're all self taught, some of us just have more outside help than others. What lattice work we extend from to add our own thing to it varies. Could it never be scales?

3. Books. Evil Books. Bad. Real world, doing!, Authentic! Yes, I've probably read that before. You've learned it, from real exploration from your account. I sincerely applaud you. Really. I agree with you that doing music is a very valid way to learn music, which I think is your point.

Now after reading your post I'm inclined to try out some weird scale and see what much can be wrangled out of that that might hold someone's attention. Is that due to reading or exploration? I get confused.

As to the dictionary metaphor in other posts. I'm probably a nerdy odd-ball, but I've looked through dictionaries just for grins looking to find odd words and have been fascinated. Yes it's an arbitrary way to learn, and yes we learn most of our vocabulary "in the wild." What is more common (or at least used to be) is reading that old fashioned compendium an encyclopedia from front to back more or less all the way through. I did that as a kid (World Book, sold to families door to door back then) so did some of my sisters, and I've run into others who did the same thing.

[frankmcr]

What this kind of thing actually sounds like, one example -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk9CYP-P4yE

Slonimsky and Frank Zappa admired each other's work -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk9CYP-P4yE

". . . all thanks to a book of mine that contains all kinds of crazy scales and melodic patterns . . . "

Seems like Slonimsky had a sense of humor. Some of the responses above, though . . .

[DukeX]

Originally Posted by fazool

I think that is a fallacy.

Essentially no one, thinks "hey, I want to learn a new word today" and thumbs through a dictionary.

Quite the opposite (I think): Someone hears a word while listening to people around them and wonders "hey what was that word?"

So, the reference is of no use by itself. It is a useful tool to aid in experiential learning.

No one learns words by going to a dictionary, first.

They learn words by hearing them in use, then looking them up in the dictionary, second.

(I think)

Some of us do (yes, we may be a little strange). As a writer I enjoy an occasional study of a Dictionary and Thesaurus. I'll take a word like "evil" or "soft" and study all of the different types of synonyms (nuances) and usages, and then I'll explore the synonyms of the synonyms and their uses--and find many new words and creative ways to express the human experience.

And then I learn how to use each word properly in context so I am not using words that I do not fully understand (the various meanings and the normal or creative context).

I always have good dictionaries and a couple of Roget's in the house. I even still use my big old 1966 three volume Webster's because of its thoroughness. It also gives me a historical reference because the meanings of words can change subtly (or not so subtly) over time.

I will also browse the dictionary just for fun and find interesting words and then repeat the process--just did this yesterday.

And as SunnyDee said, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has over 600,000 words and is a treasure for those who love words and writing.

So we may be few, but we are out there.

[SunnyDee]

Originally Posted by fazool

I think that is a fallacy.

Essentially no one, thinks "hey, I want to learn a new word today" and thumbs through a dictionary.
(I think)

Actually, no. Many, many people do. I teach English as a second language and train international English teachers. 75% of the world's English users are not native speakers. A very large majority of them learn from books and resources other than simply hearing the words used around them in their immediate environment. Chinese students, for example, are well-known for arriving in U.S. universities with low listening skills, but huge vocabularies learned from dictionaries. This isn't about ESL, though, it's about the way people, especially adults, learn things outside their immediate experience using reference material and how deliberately studying things can have value.

I grew up in a small town in Mississippi hearing nothing but country and folk music and the occasional very bad pop song. As much as I love some of that music, I'm incredibly grateful that my awareness of music is far larger than my early limited environment. I didn't know about this book before this post, but I'm looking at it now. It's interesting, and I expect I'll learn from it.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

Responding to your numbered points.

1. I shake my head at the comment about the study of scales (or even arbitrarily trying some different scales just for grins) telling you nothing about how music works.

I meant the extent to which these books overload you with scales. Of course music, at the basic level begins from scales. You don't need books like this to tell you that.

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

In a summary degree, I'm not sure anyone knows how music works,

Ah-ha! Good point!
To get pedantic, I think we can explain "how" to some extent (if not entirely); it's the "why" that gets tricky. And the word "works" itself is a problem. What do we mean when we say a piece of music "works"?

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

2. Doing it yourself is better? Yes, internalizing anything you find from any source (including your own accidents, or extensions of your own study) seems to be a key factor in creativity. I'm reminded of a favorite saying: We're all self taught, some of us just have more outside help than others. What lattice work we extend from to add our own thing to it varies. Could it never be scales?

Again, I have no problem with scales per se. I do think they're over-rated in music education, but as a fundamental element they're crucial.

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

3. Books. Evil Books. Bad. Real world, doing!, Authentic! Yes, I've probably read that before. You've learned it, from real exploration from your account. I sincerely applaud you. Really. I agree with you that doing music is a very valid way to learn music, which I think is your point.

Yes. Naturally, I'm exaggerating to make a point. There are some people (present company maybe excepted ) who think they can learn everything from books, that books contain the secrets.
Books can certainly be very helpful in learning music, but they can only ever scratch the surface, or sketch around the outlines of what music actually is.
The point about music is that it defeats verbal language. It's a different system of communication, expressing things that can't be expressed in words. There's all kinds of ways we can describe music, using words, notation, etc., and that is undoubtedly useful, and books can certainly contain all that information.
The problem is that music itself is not information. Music is a series of sounds in time (organised in time). You can only really understand it by listening to it (and even more by playing it). Reading about it will help us talk about it - which is good! - but won't help understand how it works.

More to the point, books like this - which are essentially collections of scale patterns in endless permutations - are the least useful kinds of music book. When I say you can do it all yourself, I mean mapping out the fretboard and playing scales in various ways. No one needs to be told all the ways to do that. One page of information will give you all the notes on the fretboard and the formulas for all the scales that matter. One page. Plotting out the various patterns (including chord arpeggios) is then the best way to learn and practise.
Obviously nobody is going to make any money selling a one-page book! So the more pages they can stuff with information (saying the same thing as many different ways as they can think), the bigger the book gets, the more "complete" it become, the more spurious authority it can seem to have, and therefore the more appealing it will be to buyers.

The most useful kinds of music book are songbooks. The second most useful kind are theory books (especially if they contain plenty of real world examples). After that would come books on musicology or music history (backgrounds to favourite genres). Compendiums of every possible scale pattern imaginable would come way down the list. Assuming one wants to actually be a musician, that is, rather than just idly noodle away on scale patterns, as a kind of therapy maybe. (Yes, it's good finger exercise too. But again, no book is needed for that, once you know one single scale pattern.)

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

Now after reading your post I'm inclined to try out some weird scale and see what much can be wrangled out of that that might hold someone's attention. Is that due to reading or exploration? I get confused.

I'm sure such books can introduce you to various weird and wonderful scales. There are 100s in use around the world, and opening your ears in that way is obviously valuable.
What I'm objecting to is the wasting of space in those kinds of books by mapping out every possible way of playing one scale, especially when they assign different names to the various patterns or positions, as if they have some kind of musical meaning.
E.g., there are multiple ways of playing the notes of the C major scale. But it's only one scale. The pattern it makes on the fretboard is one pattern. Of course, that pattern covers 12 frets, and needs to be broken down into positions to be playable; that's fair enough. But there's no magic there, no secret. One can break the pattern down oneself, intuitively and usefully, by spotting chord shapes within it. And that 12-fret pattern is the same for all 12 major scales, it just shifts up or down the fretboard. You don't need 100s of pages to see all the possible permutations of every one laid out.

But I agree with your point in that there are other kinds of scale that are worth investigating. No quarrel with that!

Originally Posted by FrankHudson

As to the dictionary metaphor in other posts. I'm probably a nerdy odd-ball, but I've looked through dictionaries just for grins looking to find odd words and have been fascinated. Yes it's an arbitrary way to learn, and yes we learn most of our vocabulary "in the wild." What is more common (or at least used to be) is reading that old fashioned compendium an encyclopedia from front to back more or less all the way through. I did that as a kid (World Book, sold to families door to door back then) so did some of my sisters, and I've run into others who did the same thing.

Fair point. Curiosity is a great thing, not to be discouraged!
The issue with any book is about comparative usefulness in helping understand how music works (given that that's an elusive goal in any case).

My angle really is that there are way more useful books than this, if one is buying books to help one progress as a musician.
Of course, everyone has their own goals and aims in that respect. I'm sure some would be very content to have a dictionary or thesaurus of scales to idly noodle away a relaxing hour or so every now and then. It may be a mindless exercise, but mindlessless can be soothing, comforting, especially if one's life otherwise is frenetically busy and demanding.

I'm just some guy on the internet offering his $0.02 based on his own experience. The OP asked for "opinions", which is what I gave. Hopefully this post has explained the basis of those opinions a little more.

[Optofonik]

Thank you so much for the responses so far. As a lapsed "music major" I think I'm on he right track with this book.

frankmcr, thank you so much for posting those links, especially the first one. That's very much the approach I have tried to take when learning the fret board of the bass guitar, "a sound". I think it's similar to what I got out of learning a (very tiny) bit about twelve-tone serialism. A cohesive, musically logical, scale is just any construct that creates "a sound" or a progressive musical "tone" that sounds "right".

Sigh... It's been a 20+ hour day so I'm probably not making sense but I really do appreciate the replies everyone has taken the time to post.

[rick-slo]

Agree with JonPR. There are better ways to learn how to play guitar and about music in general. Since there is only so much time in a day,
in a life, to devote to this subject you would be better off by being selective and logical in what information you study and what methods
you use. Whatever obtuse books, etc. you study takes away from the time you would have had to have been studying more useful material
(or listening to and playing music for that matter).

[FwL]

One of the things I've taken away from the little time I have spent with this book is looking at things in a more "serial" fashion rather than a diatonic fashion.

If all you want to do is play some blues, this may not be of use to you. If, on the other hand, you're interested in exploring music outside the confines of I IV V and ii V I, there's some interesting source material presented in the book.

If you've ever looked at Mick Goodrick's approach to teaching, you'll find them very similar.

.

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by JonPR

I meant the extent to which these books overload you with scales. Of course music, at the basic level begins from scales. You don't need books like this to tell you that.
Ah-ha! Good point!
To get pedantic, I think we can explain "how" to some extent (if not entirely); it's the "why" that gets tricky. And the word "works" itself is a problem. What do we mean when we say a piece of music "works"?
Again, I have no problem with scales per se. I do think they're over-rated in music education, but as a fundamental element they're crucial.
Yes. Naturally, I'm exaggerating to make a point. There are some people (present company maybe excepted ) who think they can learn everything from books, that books contain the secrets.
Books can certainly be very helpful in learning music, but they can only ever scratch the surface, or sketch around the outlines of what music actually is.
The point about music is that it defeats verbal language. It's a different system of communication, expressing things that can't be expressed in words. There's all kinds of ways we can describe music, using words, notation, etc., and that is undoubtedly useful, and books can certainly contain all that information.
The problem is that music itself is not information. Music is a series of sounds in time (organised in time). You can only really understand it by listening to it (and even more by playing it). Reading about it will help us talk about it - which is good! - but won't help understand how it works.

More to the point, books like this - which are essentially collections of scale patterns in endless permutations - are the least useful kinds of music book. When I say you can do it all yourself, I mean mapping out the fretboard and playing scales in various ways. No one needs to be told all the ways to do that. One page of information will give you all the notes on the fretboard and the formulas for all the scales that matter. One page. Plotting out the various patterns (including chord arpeggios) is then the best way to learn and practise.
Obviously nobody is going to make any money selling a one-page book! So the more pages they can stuff with information (saying the same thing as many different ways as they can think), the bigger the book gets, the more "complete" it become, the more spurious authority it can seem to have, and therefore the more appealing it will be to buyers.

The most useful kinds of music book are songbooks. The second most useful kind are theory books (especially if they contain plenty of real world examples). After that would come books on musicology or music history (backgrounds to favourite genres). Compendiums of every possible scale pattern imaginable would come way down the list. Assuming one wants to actually be a musician, that is, rather than just idly noodle away on scale patterns, as a kind of therapy maybe. (Yes, it's good finger exercise too. But again, no book is needed for that, once you know one single scale pattern.)
I'm sure such books can introduce you to various weird and wonderful scales. There are 100s in use around the world, and opening your ears in that way is obviously valuable.
What I'm objecting to is the wasting of space in those kinds of books by mapping out every possible way of playing one scale, especially when they assign different names to the various patterns or positions, as if they have some kind of musical meaning.
E.g., there are multiple ways of playing the notes of the C major scale. But it's only one scale. The pattern it makes on the fretboard is one pattern. Of course, that pattern covers 12 frets, and needs to be broken down into positions to be playable; that's fair enough. But there's no magic there, no secret. One can break the pattern down oneself, intuitively and usefully, by spotting chord shapes within it. And that 12-fret pattern is the same for all 12 major scales, it just shifts up or down the fretboard. You don't need 100s of pages to see all the possible permutations of every one laid out.

But I agree with your point in that there are other kinds of scale that are worth investigating. No quarrel with that!
Fair point. Curiosity is a great thing, not to be discouraged!
The issue with any book is about comparative usefulness in helping understand how music works (given that that's an elusive goal in any case).

My angle really is that there are way more useful books than this, if one is buying books to help one progress as a musician.
Of course, everyone has their own goals and aims in that respect. I'm sure some would be very content to have a dictionary or thesaurus of scales to idly noodle away a relaxing hour or so every now and then. It may be a mindless exercise, but mindlessless can be soothing, comforting, especially if one's life otherwise is frenetically busy and demanding.

I'm just some guy on the internet offering his $0.02 based on his own experience. The OP asked for "opinions", which is what I gave. Hopefully this post has explained the basis of those opinions a little more.

Yes, I understand you much better now, and though my skill levels are low (and falling) as a guitarist, I suspect we are more-or-less in alignment in how we learned or approach the guitar. I had some fear right after clicking "post" that I might have come off as dismissive from level of authority I don't have. Thank you so much for reading my response as mostly a puzzled series of probing questions and "how then do we then account for..." thoughts.

I read you, mistakenly I now believe, as dismissing the idea of scale structure as an valid way to start to compose something (either instantly as in improvisation or saved for reuse). Reading about an odd scale and then making a melodic line from it sounds as valid to me as throwing the I Ching as John Cage did or transposing a line from a be bop record or even doing what Howard Roberts once suggested in an old Guitar Player column of creating a scale by spelling out a word. How we use, phrase and add playing dynamics and timbre to a scale allows a lot of odd (or commonplace) stuff to sound to some listening minds as music. Which is when music "works," when someone, subjectively, listens to it and derives something they appreciate.