Some guitar books and videos stay in your consciousness for years and years.
For me, this is how it’s been with Don Mock’s many books and videos. If you’re not familiar with Don, he is one of the key people responsible for the launch of Guitar Institute of Technology (GIT) – now known as Musicians Institute. In addition to Don’s work at GIT, he is also the author of many guitar method books for REH Publications and was also important in the development of many guitar videos and books over the years.
When I first heard about this book from Guitar Vivo publisher, Luke Lewis, I was excited. Then when I got my advance copy (quite sometime ago), I was utterly blown away.
The thing about this new Arpeggio Alchemy book is that Don has basically given the best bits and most practical info needed to use arpeggios in a practical way. Some books are written from a very dry, completist kind of way – so although it might seem to have everything in a book, the actual lines or concepts (though theoretically correct) might not be the kind of thing that is easy to use.
In this case, this book is a bit like hanging out with Don Mock and him giving you the most important info for each topic, the fingering, the application and then actual lines that show you the context. Now he might not go through every single that for that particular topic, but he sure gives you straight up the most useful stuff that can actually make a difference in your playing.
In that sense, think of this book at the 80/20 of arpeggio books. This book gives you the top 20% of material that gives you 80% of the results needed to function at a higher level.
If you thought Don’s old book, Artful Arpeggios was cool, this book is all that, but on steroids.
This book is over 160 pages, covers over 100 arpeggio concepts, licks, structures, and applications, has more than 240 musical examples, comes with 290 Audio Files (mp3 format) and includes a launch video masterclass replay, which honestly is worth the price of admission.
The book is well organized and helps you develop these arpeggio skills via a step by step approach by getting familiar with the main arpeggios and fingering, followed by concepts and examples of lines that demonstrate how they sound in context.
The key idea of the book is to develop your command of arpeggios by using one-octave arpeggio shapes!
In addition to all the written examples, the accompanying audio helps you hear how these lines, exercises and etudes are supposed to sound like. You also get backing tracks for many of the examples as well.
One of my favorite chapters in the book, Diatonic Arpeggio Combinations is something that I’ve done over the years… but I’ve never seen the amount of detail that Don goes through to show how powerful these simple one-octave arpeggios can be used to create interesting lines that cover the entire neck smoothly.
By the time you reach the Playing Outside With Arpeggios chapter, each of these lines could easily be something that you learn and dissect and organize into 5, 10 or 15 other related ideas. This is a goldmine of outside playing ideas if that is what you’re looking for. Some of these ideas are the kind of stuff you’ve heard in really hip fusion solos and the larger intervallic ideas remind me of stuff Joe Diorio, Julian Lage or John Stowell and of course Don Mock would play.
The closing chapter in the book, Interval Stacks as Arpeggios has some seriously technically challenging ideas from both an “ear perspective” and “hands perspective”. Not a lot of folks would have probably gone deep into this intervallic rabbit hole.
All in all, this is an amazing new book from Don Mock. I certainly will be spending a lot of time working on the material and getting this into my fingers and ears. Thanks Don!
Pros: A great book from a master guitar educator.
Cons: None.
TLDR: If you’ve worked through any of Don Mock’s past books and loved them, you will probably absolutely adore this one. It’s obvious that both Don and Luke put a lot of love into making this a great book, and I believe this book will reward the curious and hardworking guitarist with new sounds and fun over many years.
Get the book here: https://guitarvivo.live/product/arpeggio-alchemy-by-don-mock/
Thanks Luke Lewis for the advance copy, appreciate it!
[Submissions for Review Consideration]
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