Review or Opinion of MANDOLIN PLAYER'S GUITAR TO SCALES AND ARPEG

[mrneil2]

Anyone use this book/cd set," MANDOLIN PLAYER'S GUITAR TO SCALES AND ARPEGGIOS BY TIM MAY AND DAN MILLER?" From Flatpicking Guitar Magazine.

Opinions, reviews or other suggestions.

I have Bluegrass Up The Neck and the Pentatonics by Nile H. Just looking for other scales/ arpeggios that are more practical to bluegrass besides doing tedious scale exercises. I like the description says " teaches you how to learn scales in a way that is easy, fun, interesting, and informative, it also shows you how to practically apply scales when learning new melodies, embellishing those melodies to create your own solos and variations, and in exploring improvisations."

I searched but did not see this already discussed here.


Edited title to read Guide to scales....

Thanks Charlie. I cut and pasted from their website

[Charlie Bernstein]

Hi, Mr. Neil!

"GUITAR to Scales"? I saw that headline, too, but the actual title is "The Mandolin Player's Practical GUIDE to Scales & Arpeggios."

No, I haven't used it. It's a beguiling come-on: "easy, fun, interesting, and informative." They wouldn't sell many if they said "hard, a drag, boring, and useless."

But it might be all that and a bag of chips. If you get it, let us know what you think.

[mrneil2]

Charlie,

OOPs I cut and pasted from the website and i guess I didn't read the title. They have it wrong should read Guide. Good catch.

[CarlM]

I have the guitar version and a friend has the mandolin version. It is useful if you are looking for exercises, a lot of exercises to develop familiarity with the fingerboard. It is written primarily by Tim May who is a fine instructor, mandolin player and guitarist. At one point Tim and Dan Miller were doing workshops based on the book. The workshops were very good and gave an overview of the ideas Tim has about how to structure solos and improvisation that the book is written around. The workshop helps a lot in understanding the points he makes in the book but I do not know if he still gives them.

[Steve L]

Carl, does the guitar book have the exercises in standard notation?

[CarlM]

Steve
Yes it has standard notation and tab with two cds