Originally Posted by
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:
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.
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