Strange choice of words for this book title.

"Scarpology: The science of determining characteristic traits by examining a persons shoes."
- Grandiloquent Dictionary

bratsche

Another music book that has no online samples of the teaching methodology.

I will be watching for reviews on Amazon.com. I have two fretboard mapping books and both are only marginally helpful.

there is much more information on the authorhttp://ouibis.com/mandoSymmetry/category/music-theory/scarpology/

Thanks for the quick replies from Mandolin Cafe viewers and also thanks to Scott Tichenor for posting the notification.

reply to bratsche: Yes, that is interesting. I coined the phrase without knowledge of the science of behavioral studies related to the appearance of one's shoes and learned about that later. If you took a look at my shoes, it would be obvious that I spent a lot more time writing music tutorials than managing stock portfolios.

reply to JonZ: You're right, I didn't show samples but I do go into a long discussion of what is in the book and I have some video demonstrations (I'm not a class-act videographer). I hope this helps at least a little.

reply to lorrainehornig: The book is pretty new and so my guess is that the users are still working through the material. I have sold roughly 20 digital copies and one printed version. I have heard good input from a couple of recipients as well as positive reviews from Ted Eschliman and Don Stiernberg. There was one talented musician who had doubts about the book which I tried to address here: link returns 404 error

I hope to be encouraging in the book. So much hinges on how players feel about themselves at the beginning and at every step along the way. Much of what I say in the book addresses just that. The approach focuses on progress: both making progress and, more importantly, recognizing progress as it comes in the accumulation of small steps.

Thanks for the reply Steve and welcome to the Cafe!

Finally got around to downloading it, Im lazy so here's my amazon review:

"I had read about this book on mandolin cafe awhile back. It interested me, but I was working through other study material at the time (and on top of that I did not realize how easy it was to view kindle books from my computer without a kindle). For the price I was expecting something similar to Mike Marshall's improv book, a great supplement to other material and reference to glance at to see key points, but not a stand alone method book. I was blown away when I started looking through it; almost 80 pages and by far more writing than diagrams (still plenty of diagrams). I have not dived too deep into Scarpology yet, but from the beginning it is easy to tell it is unique from other mandolin improv books. Jesper's and Nile's books are among some of my favorites, but all of them (like many mando improv books) seem to be working towards he same idea and just have different exercises to get there. Scarpology on the other hand uses a very original approach by introducing "scarps" (mix of a scale and arpeggio). I look forward to working through this book. Even though I've yet to go deep into it, I already know it was money well spent."


As I touched on in the review I have yet to really start practicing the material, but I gave Scarpology 5 stars at first glance because for under $5 you can't go wrong with the amount of material alone. On top of that it is very original material. Skimming through the first part of the book I am already confident that I will be able to better understand modes by using "scarps".

I too bought it, but quickly became disillusioned with a very poorly thought-out product/service. Buyers of printed versions get a CD of the vital audio practice tracks. People like me who opt to download the book to Kindle/iPad are stuck with a webpage whose performance and reliability has been, in my experience, seriously dodgy (I have had multiple attempts to access the files foiled by problems with the server or whatever else the author was trying to blame).

The difficulties with the web page are only a part of the issue. The real problem is that the author, quoting frankly laughable fears about 'piracy', makes it impossible to download the simple synthesised audio files (the ones that anyone who buys the more expensive printed version of the book receives on a CD). Who would want to steal them? This means that the only way you can practise along with the vital audio files is when you have access to the internet. How inconvenient is that? And THEN you still have to hope that the extremely unreliable page is actually working.

I exchanged emails with the author and got nowhere. He is seemingly not interested in delivering a working product (with downloadable audio files) to this paying customer, so he gets no praise from me. One to avoid.

ron mcmillan

Ron has a legitimate complaint. Originally the web page's servers were being migrated (back in December) and there was significant down time. Ron and I are halfway around the world from each other, but today, in Texas, when I visit the page, it works for me.

I put a monitoring service (Pingdom.Com) onto the page but that only pings the server and doesn't monitor continuously. It shows that over the past 2 weeks, the site has been up 97% of the time, yet that data must be looked at with discretion.

The sound files are public at this page http://ouibis.com/mandoSymmetry/mandolin-tutorials/scarpology-mandolin-tutorials-home-page/scarpology-improv-book-media-page/ so you can see how it works yourself. Sound files are embedded, not downloaded. I don't distribute them and I can't either with the EBook or publicly for free. They come on a disc with the print version.

The sound files themselves really aren't much to write home about. I hope I've acted and addressed this reasonably. I continue to watch and listen.

I realize this is an old thread, but seeing some negativity on the book here makes me want to put my thoughts into the fray.

I have worked through about half of the book today and I am very impressed with the clarity of the material. I've been playing music since I was about 5 (I'm 27 now) and modal thought and theory has always evaded me for the most part (though I do have a passable understanding of very basic theory). I've always had an above average ear and, as such, I've used it as a cheat code more than anything else. Why learn the ideas when you can just play what sounds good? But I digress. The point is that recently I've been dissatisfied with my understanding of the fretboard and for five bucks I took a chance on the Kindle version of this.

A scarp is an interesting concept to me, as I'm always interested in incorporating more arpeggios and arpeggiated picking to my playing. Combining this with something less intimidating, such as scales, and I'm keenly interested. The book attempts to inundate the reader with a working knowledge of modes, and it succeeds in every way in my opinion. It doesn't overwhelm the player with exercises or an abundance of notes without much explanation. Instead it gradually introduces and creates comfort; first with two finger modes, then three, then four, all based in and explained with theory that doesn't overwhelm, but also refuses to oversimplify. The result for me is the first time in my life that I've really felt like modes even begin to make sense. The book isn't afraid to spend a couple pages talking about concepts, and for a book that is aimed at people who are trying to become more comfortable with knowledge of the fretboard, and (no matter what they have the ABILITY to play) are thus probably feeling mentally like an intermediate player, this is an extremely welcome aspect. I've seen on Amazon where one reviewer complained that there was too much text with not enough charts, but I don't agree. I think many books make the mistake of not explaining what simply must be explained for a concept to take its full effect. They instead put a chart or figure and essentially wish the reader good luck. I enjoy greatly the fact that this book bothers to explain ideas and attempts to do a lot with what seems like little.

While one poster above took issue with audio files availability, in 2018 this is just something I couldn't be bothered to notice. Practically speaking, YouTube is so full of backing tracks that I wasn't even thinking about using the book's links. It recommended to practice my modes over A7 and Bb7, so I pulled up very nice backing tracks that were simply one chord tracks set up in 4/4, allowing me to run my modes as well as do so with some rhythm and groove.

I am impressed with the book so far and should have it finished in the next couple days. Since I regularly come to the cafe to read reviews over anything mandolin related before I buy, I wanted to take the time to write something positive about this book, which despite almost universal good reviews on Amazon, only seems to have this thread on the cafe, and it is not all that positive. Flatly, this is a book that is worth the time it requests of you to work through it.

You can right-click and download all the audio tracks from the link the author posted above.