Mel Bay vs Leavitt

[cbarry85t]

matt.guitarteacher - here's an older quote of yours I found which gets at some of what I find so mystifying about Leavitt's method - it's referring to the single key, 5-position scale drills which begin in vol. 2:

I worked about halfway through book 2 where I got really frustrated... A big problem was trying to figure out what the purpose of these sections was. Am I supposed to be thinking letter names and trying to memorize them as I play them? I found that because I was already familiar with the scales, my fingers/ears just kind of took over, and it was difficult to think about really "locking in" note names in position, especially with the eighth note runs which are so prevalent in these exercises.

I never found this to be a problem in the Reading Studies books because they're geared toward avoiding patterns. There seemed to be a real kinesthetic connection to where "Bb" is in a given position because you work through that position in all 12 keys before moving to another.

At some point I thought that the exercises were just notated scale patterns to learn, but the other reading material such as chord etudes changed as well with the assumption that you could now read these higher positions. I always get the feeling that maybe I should just finish out the Reading Studies books before even messing with this stuff.

This puzzled me as well, especially since those exercises are very scalar and have barely any disjunct motion or chromaticism that would really hammer home those note names. This is also how he works all the 12 position major / 9 position minor stuff in volume 3.

At the end of volume 1 he does a similar thing moving the basic scale fingerings to all kinds of new (to the student) keys like E and Db major, with no real introduction or roadmap as to what's flat / sharp and where. His instructions are basically "by now your fingers know the patterns so you can concentrate on the notes." For me, it's when I'm comfortable in a well-rehearsed scale pattern that I'm least likely to concentrate on the notes - my eye just goes to the top or bottom note of the scale run and walks my fingers through the pattern up to that note.

Monster readers like Tommy Tedesco and Tom Bruner talk a lot in their books about how players cling too closely to scale fingerings for sight reading and it prevents them from really making strong mental connections between notes and frets, so it was surprising to see Leavitt basically throw you in the deep end (5 flats in Db major) but then kind of softball you with basic linear motion or 3rd runs with almost no chromatics.

[JakeAcci]

Yes, I agree here - it seems even coming out of grade 7 a Mel Bay student could be blindsided by heavily syncopated material - there is certainly nothing in Bay comparable to the melodic rhythms exercises in Leavitt's method (but then, why not just supplement Mel Bay with the Melodic Rhythms book?)

Hah, I own that book and I simply forgot it existed until this moment. But I think a book that is only rhythms has distinct advantages, especially because the Bellson book gets much much more syncopated at the end than Leavitt's book.

[matt.guitarteacher]

matt.guitarteacher - here's an older quote of yours I found which gets at some of what I find so mystifying about Leavitt's method - it's referring to the single key, 5-position scale drills which begin in vol. 2:



This puzzled me as well, especially since those exercises are very scalar and have barely any disjunct motion or chromaticism that would really hammer home those note names. This is also how he works all the 12 position major / 9 position minor stuff in volume 3.

At the end of volume 1 he does a similar thing moving the basic scale fingerings to all kinds of new (to the student) keys like E and Db major, with no real introduction or roadmap as to what's flat / sharp and where. His instructions are basically "by now your fingers know the patterns so you can concentrate on the notes." For me, it's when I'm comfortable in a well-rehearsed scale pattern that I'm least likely to concentrate on the notes - my eye just goes to the top or bottom note of the scale run and walks my fingers through the pattern up to that note.

Monster readers like Tommy Tedesco and Tom Bruner talk a lot in their books about how players cling too closely to scale fingerings for sight reading and it prevents them from really making strong mental connections between notes and frets, so it was surprising to see Leavitt basically throw you in the deep end (5 flats in Db major) but then kind of softball you with basic linear motion or 3rd runs with almost no chromatics.

Yeah. Since then, over the years I've gotten some comments from Berklee guys, like Reg and Ron, explaining that it's not really a stand alone, all-encompassing, self instruction book. It should ideally be used with a good teacher, and Leavitt's other supplemental materials definitely help as well.