John W. Schaum (1905–1988)

This book is suitable for beginners; in other words I mean those who have not advanced to the intermediate level, yet have some foundation in note reading and at least a year or two of lessons under their belt. If you're just beginning to study scales, this is a great book. If you've been away from reading music for years, this is also a good "refresher" book.

It gives you the basic scale format, the triad chords that go with each key, and a repertoire piece written in the relevant key for each scale. There are several written exercise pages and a page on which you can track your progress as you work through this book. It starts easy with the C Major scale and works through the major sharp scales up to B Major, which has 5 sharps in it. You then progress to the major flat scales and work up that side from F Major which has just one flat to G Flat Major, which has 6 flats. This same book also covers the relative minor scales to those major scales earler presented, so that, when you finish this book, you have learned 12 major scales, along with their relative minors and 24 interesting pieces of music too.

The enharmonic scales of six and seven sharps and seven flats are deliberately excluded from this book because they are presented in book two, along with that other book also teaching the playing of all scales in parallel and contrary motion. I've been working with book one a few weeks now and the biggest problem I found is that it does not come with a CD, so, there's no definitive way to know how the pieces are supposed to sound. Still, I won't downgrade the book for that... because, after all, if you read the music correctly and play the correct notes at the correct rhythm, you can't be too far off. The information is all right there in the book for your use and mine. I'll go on to book two once I've made my way through the mazes of all those sharps and flats...… (mer)