Scaling the Next Hurdle

You know that your husband loves you when he presents you with two amazing guitar books for beginners on Mother's Day. The first is The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook (more on this little slice of happiness in a later post). The second is Total Scales Techniques and Applications by Mark John Sternal.

For the beginning amateur guitarist, the Internet is awash in resources—some free, some not so free. There are plenty of would-be guitar instructors on YouTube, and plenty more touting their own systems on their personal Web sites. While I appreciate these online sources, it is awfully nice to get one's hands on a music book. Not only are they easier to read, but you don't have to worry about your screensaver kicking on in the middle of puzzling out a line of music.

Up until now, I've been finding songs I like and strumming blockily through them to my heart's content. But this is only satisfying for so long. Block chords have their place, of course, but most songs use combinations of single notes and chords to create beautiful music. The block chord route can sound a little, well, shouty, if you know what I mean.

To get out of the block chord blahs requires homework, and that's where Sternal's book comes in. Sternal's step-by-step approach to learning scales not only teaches proper technique but also familiarizes beginning guitarists with the location of the notes on the fretboard and how they relate to one another. He also has included a handy CD to demonstrate what a beautiful scale is supposed to sound like. It's very therapeutic after struggling sadly from one note to another on my own!

Sternal's approach reminds me exactly of my piano lessons growing up, during which I was taught a new scale every week and asked to play it perfectly at the next lesson. Of course, I never did. Those scales, unless they were incredibly easy C major scales, always sounded like Syssiphus on the uphill trek with his ginormous boulder: halting and sweaty. Let's just say, I didn't practice.

As on the piano, scales on the guitar are an excellent orienteering exercise. So, I am motivated to learn this new terrain of the fretboard, no matter how slow my progress. But we're talking slow. I just spent a sad 15 minutes or so laboring up the "E position C major/ Am scale or Third Position" on page 12.

Part of the struggle is the addition of the pick. I have been finger-strumming up until this point, but as the pick is so prevalent these days, I'm going to have to learn it sometime. The book recommends picking these scales, and I am. But, yikes! That little piece of plastic is slowing me all the way down. I assume it will take me two or three hours to finally master page 12. With 152 pages to go, I will probably be at this book for a long time—if not for the rest of my life. Yikes!

A note for my fellow publishing types: Sternal's self-published book (2008, revised edition) is in pretty good shape, all things considered. There are relatively few typos, which for a presumably amateur publishing effort is quite impressive. But there is one quirk that makes me laugh every time. The manual will cruise along for pages in Times New Roman then—bam!—you're in Arial. If I were to give Sternal the benefit of the doubt, I would guess this was to separate the revised content from the original content. But I think it's probably just an oversight. Also, there is something a little bit hilarious about the author pic at the end of this book of scales—Sternal appears to be all hair and tank top. My husband confesses that he nearly passed on the book because of the picture, but caved due to rave reviews online.