Jazz Guitar Scales & Modes Paperback – April 27, 1981

This one is not for the meek. If you live and breath and eat and sleep guitar, this should make a good reference for you. The charm of beautiful calligraphy-level notation-by-hand makes using this book especially nice. It's a hefty book by today's standards - 156 pp, w/ no CD, but none needed. Especially cool are the many exercises for *connecting* scales and arpeggios - up and down the fingerboard. If you're setting out to take your guitar playing to John McLaughlin heights, you'll dig this - and it isn't expensive, given the amount of info between the covers. If you feel there's a lifetime of work in just the major scale and the pentatonic and blues scales - this might be overwhelm. No tab, but the notation includes complete fingering, and it's gorgeous.

Good for beginners. Chock full of good information and fingerings, especially

I am a fan of Vincent Bredice's Mel Bay Complete Guitar Improvisation Book, however I noticed it lacked of some scale and modes exercises. This book, and Jazz Guitar Lines as well, complement quite well that book. Lots of modes etudes . Quite practical. Recommended!

Even if the title says "Jazz" on it, you should get this book regardless of your musical style. There's no CD, no cool licks, and no shortcuts, but a great amount of information on scales, patterns, secuences, conecting patterns, mixing scales and arpegios and lots of hard work. Besides scales, this book will give you fretboard knowledge, ear training and hand dexterity.There's a small detail, no tab. But seriously, if you can handle the first volume of the Mel Bay's "modern" guitar method, you can start with this book, the rest will fall in place over time.Vincent Bredice is a fantastic author for serious students, every book I've seen authored by him is outstanding. If you ever come across one of his books, just buy it, you just can't go wrong with him.