The Encyclopoedia

There are many guitar scale books available.

This is not just another one.

An Encyclopoedia of Arpeggio and Scale Resources for Guitar was written in frustration at so many guitar scale books that claimed to be "complete" or "encyclopoedic" but all contained the same few dozen scales. In contrast, the Encyclopoedia is a very comprehensive, 366-page feast of scale and arpeggio possibilities for the guitar.

Naturally it includes all the basic, common scales you need to play rock, blues, jazz and so on, but also a vast number of exotic resources for you to experiment with and use to develop your own unique sounds. Many of these have, to my knowledge, never or hardly ever been used before.

A very thorough chapter on scale theory is included: it provides a solid foundation and ensures you'll never again be confused about modes, the most useful but also most misunderstood concept in modern guitar theory. I use this as the basis for most of my theoretical teaching with students who are ready for single-note work.

The Contents

The Encyclopoedia is divided into three parts: a short first part called "Fundamentals" and much longer second and third parts containing the advanced resources that make up most of the book.

Part 1 is dedicated to covering the basics very thoroughly. It takes up the first 60 pages and contains the following chapters, which are designed to be studied in order:

• An explanation of basic scale theory, giving precise definitions to terms such as "gamut", "scale", "root note", "mode", "interval" and so on.
• Full CAGED fingerings for the triad arpeggios with an introduction to the CAGED system and information about how to learn and use them
• Full CAGED fingerings for the seventh arpeggios with some classic jazz applications
• Full CAGED fingerings for all of the modes of the common pentatonic, major, harmonic minor and melodic minor scales; the so-called "blues scale" is also briefly covered
• A short chapter containing the fingerings for the intervals within the octave, which can be thought of as two-note scales

Part 2 covers 200 pages and is full of strange and wonderful scales and arpeggios. It contains the following chapters, which are designed to be dipped into at random; all resources are given with full CAGED fingerings.

• All possible symmetrical scales, with an explanation of what "symmetrical" means in this context
• Further arpeggios, including 9, 11 and 13 added to the triad, alterations of the standard triads and suspensions. All of these are considered "hypermodally", looking at all 12 possible applications of an arpeggio relative to a given root note. Every possible 3- and 4-note combination of notes is covered in this way.
• Every possible pentatonic scale that doesn't contravene the house rules (see below).
• Scale groups formed by altering one note from a common heptatonic scale: 5 from the major scale, 4 from the harmonic minor and 3 from the melodic minor.
• 28 additional heptatonic scale groups (giving 196 scales in all and completing the coverage of every possible heptatonic scale within house rules)
• All 8 non-symmetrical octatonic scale groups (64 scales) that meet the house rules

The 100-page Part 3 gives complete coverage of the hexatonic scales, and classifies them using a new framework based on higher-order symmetries. Although the theory behind this section is a little abstruse, the scales themselves offer many fresh possibilities for musical expression and exploration. Not many readers will need to go this far, but those who do will, I hope, find the coverage enlightening.

What's Covered?

When I say there are 1574 scales and arpeggios in this book, I'm not kidding. I'm not inflating the number by multiplying it by 12, just because you can play each one in any of 12 keys, and nor am I counting each of the 5 CAGED fingerings separately. I promise you there are scale books in a music shop somewhere near you that use both those tricks. Well, if I used them I'd be claiming to have 96,600 scales mapped out for you. But I'm not, because that would be daft.

No, I'm claiming to cover 1574 scales and arpeggios here because that's how many different scales and arpeggios the book covers. It contains every possible scale within the house rules. And the house rules themselves are pretty simple:

• No scales that have more than two consecutive semitones in their interval maps (I share this rule, it turns out, with the mighty Allan Holdsworth, although I didn't know it when I first introduced it)
• No scales with more than four notes and an interval bigger than a major third (a scale can have one or the other, just not both at once)

That's it -- those are the only restrictions, and they're there for what I hope are good reasons (I also break them quite a few times). The result is a vast catalogue of musical possibilities presented not in the way a computer or a maths nerd would present them (again, I hope) but in a way that hints at their musical possibilities.

It's available as a traditional book or a PDF download from the wonderful Lulu.