Guitar Scale Guru: Highly Recommended

Guitar Scale Guru, by Karl Aranjo

I really, really wish this book had been around back in the Stone Age when I was first learning guitar...

In order to pinpoint some of my weaknesses as a guitar player, over the last few years I've forced myself to go back to basics and kind of re-acquiant myself with the 'hows' and 'whys' of music theory--one of the thing's it's taught me is how little credit I give myself for my guitar playing abilities, but it's also shown me that quality of reference material can make a huge difference in how easily you learn.

Not everyone enjoys learning from books, but I do, and one of the books I picked up last year was Guitar Scale Guru, by Karl Aranjo.

I'll admit that at first glance the book's rather sloppy looking illustrations and overzealuos use of different fonts may put you off, but for the beginner or even intermediate guitar player this book is just an excellent read.

I particularly appreciate the author's uncanny ability to really get across the link between keys, scales, scale patterns, and the various movable chords... while it may be a bit difficult for me understand how a complete beginner would view the material, I firmly believe that if I had had access to such a succinct explanation of scales & modes when I was first learning I would have progressed much faster than I did.

Anyways, I also bought the author's Guitar Chord Guru book, and while it too is excellent, I would recommend the Guitar Scale Guru first, as it covers a lot of the same material, with the addition of the scales as well.

Obviously, this isn't a book for the expert guitar player, but even for a longtime player like myself it's served as a great refresher course, and I believe it would be an excellent resource for any budding young guitarist.

While it's not a great text for learning to read standard notation, Guitar Scale Guru covers real-world electric guitar playing in a way that I haven't seen before in book form. Gets five smiley guitar picks for sure.