Others say...

"This IS the Ultimate Scale Book!!!"
You cannot beat the price, quality, and value of this little book! Troy Stetina lays out a box system with fretboard diagrams that is easy to understand. This book will increase your knowledge of scales and their practical application in a short amount of time. He also points out effective methods of practice. I have purchased other instructional books by Troy Stetina and have always been happy with his products. I've been playing guitar for 18 years and I fully recommend his instructional books.

"The best book to carry in your gig bag for scales and more scales and theory"
okay, so the photo looks like a shiny eyed kind of long hair heavy metal kind of guy. Check out his list of other books, including Black Sabbath licks. Also see the college music departments he has run, and programs he has designed. Visit his eponymous website, and build your trust. You too will believe that you can one day play.

The scales in this book are just right and just enough, are just what you need, and only what you need, with enough theory underneath to understand the hows and whys. And its format fits right in the neck of your guitar case. What more could you ask for?

I could ask for a few basic chord progressions to run each scale form over, but that you can find in other music and "fake" books, and would make this few-frills presentation more weighty and unwieldly. I like it just as it is. The writer does provide genres in which each scale is often heard (such as the long list under Major Pentatonic, including country, pop, rock, blues-rock, and jazz), and that should be enough of an indication for any student of music, for further study and application, for improvising and general grooving and noodling around while your fingers build their bones and find the notes and intervals (the sounds and the silence) and the chops start coming like rain, like on the records, in the clubs.

In fact the author recommends near the end of the introductory theory section:" . . .it is important to realize that for scales to ultimately be learned effectively, you must see them at work in real life situations. Then, you will really know them! All theoretical knowledge, including scales, is useless without application. So it is recommended that as you progress through this book, you learn enough music, songs, and/or solos to see some application of these patterns. (p. 5)"

That brief quote may display some of the common stylistic tendencies of nonwriters, such as the heavy use of the passive voice and split infinitives, and exclamations for declaratory sentences, etc., but do not let such niceties discourage you. Please know that this book is in fact surprisingly well written, very evocatively yet concisely and clearly, despite frequent usage of higher level vocabulary. Do not let that frighten you, but inform you. Within this small book lies a surprisingly large amount of good information and advice along with the well-ordered and arranged scales clearly displayed across the entire guitar fretboard.

The author in fact makes a point of arranging the order of presentation and practice in a logical pattern, beginning (after the extensive and useful introductory section) with the Minor and Major Pentatonic (or five note) and blues scales. You'll be playing Hendrix after this first section alone, and stretching it out into your own cathartic improvisations. Part II then presents the Natural Minor, the Major scale and the modes. Each of the seven modes is well displayed along the fretboard, with discussion of their interrelation and with separate sections for five of the seven modes, including the well-known "odd, mysterious" Lydian mode. I would have liked to have seen the Aeolian mode discussed separately in this way as well, but already enough information is presented here for you to be playing John Coltrane sheets of sound.

In fact Part III handles the jazz scales, with among others the neo-classical or Mohammedan Harmonic Minor and jazz minor modes, including the super-Locrian. The Phrygian-Dominant or Spanish Flamenco scale also comes through here. Miles Davis will resurrect from your guitar fretboard. Hear him cry in a minor mode.

Part IV discusses and teaches atonal scales, beginning with the Chromatic scale with twelve notes to the octave, and the Whole Tone scale with six tones to the octave and "an odd sort of 'lost' quality." A third atonal scale is the Diminished. This Part IV ends with "exotic and ethnic scales" such as one called the enigmatic and the double harmonic or "gypsy" scale, which are basically hybrids of earlier scales. The ethnic scales include the Hungarian, Persian, Arabian (or major Locrian), Egyptian (said to "tend to lack resolution, and sound odd") and a few Japanese scales.

This excellent and very comprehensive and instructive scale book closes with a double appendix. The first appendix is an excellent table for constructing each of the scales, very clear and concise. The second is the always useful display of the note names a guitar fretboard over nearly two octaves (more than you will ever reach or see!)

All in all this is a great guitar scale book, with plenty of theory and all of the scales explained and shown in guitar tabluture format, which is most easily understood by any guitarist rather than "reading" standard notation. An example of standard notation is included nevertheless for each of the scales in order to see clearly in another way the steps between the notes in each of the scales (e.g., whole or half steps). This thin and long book of Hal Leonard's Pocket Guide series (which does slide as easily into any pocket as into your guitar's case as cushion) deserves a place in any practicing and professional guitar player's heart. It makes a great back-up while getting ready for any cutting jam. Stetina's got your back. At this price how can you turn his help away?


"Ultimate Scale Book"
I bought the ultimate scale book and the guitar scale bible at the same time and the ultimate scale book was much better. It was much more systematic, or if you just want the book for a reference guide then it will work as well. If not then go through the book page by page. It will walk you through it in terms a human being with not alot of guitar playing expirence can understand.

"Excelent pocket reference book!"
I have this book and it is very good book for reference about scales. It has all that you need to know. Simple reading, concise and has a lot of pratical examples. If you adopt to use this book to learn scales, you will build progressively a large arsenal of improvisation material from pentatonic minor to harmonic minor. Very good reference book that shows you how to build and use scales. Recommended!

"Not what I was looking for."
Perhaps this would be more useful for a more advanced player, but it did not give me enough step by step training for my skill level.