MBGU Rock Curriculum: Fluid Pentatonics, Book 2 [Paperback]

This book will help you break out of the traditional bluesy-sounding pentatonic box-licks and teach you to how to play flowing lines all over the neck in a style more reminiscent of Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Eric Johnson (though there are no licks from those players).

All of the examples are fun to play, very musical and immediately applicable to your playing. It's not just a collection of patterns; by studying and playing through all the examples you'll learn how to approach playing fluidly all over the neck and you'll know how to make up your own lines and sequences.

It will be helpful (though not necessary if you're super-motivated and hard-working) if you're already familiar with the traditional box shapes (Quinn reviews them at the beginning of the book) and have a basic understanding of understanding of the music theory behind them. This will help you understand how each set of studies is organized and make it easier to learn them.

This book is for intermediate to advanced players. If you're still struggling with basic technique such as alternate picking, hammers, pulls and slides, it'll be a hard slog.

There are a few typos in some of the tabs and a couple of the studies are mislabeled (let's hope Mel Bay fixes these in the next printing!), but it's pretty easy to figure out the right fingering if you look at overall pattern.

This is a great book, highly recommended.

I picked up this book while browsing through a local music store. Like many guitarists, I learned pentatonics early in my guitar playing. Also like many guitarists, their use was limited to playing over a 12 bar blues, or soloing over rock songs because I didn't know anything else. As a result they started to sound stale, and I moved on to other things. Of course, a listen to many guitarists will show that pentatonics are much more versatile than that...

To make use of the book, you need to be familiar with the five pentatonic box patterns. If you don't know these, take the time to learn them. They are useful in all types of music. There is a brief review of these before getting started on the exercises.

The first section of the book gives you seven different shifting patterns. Each pattern moves you through the five different box patterns, moving along the neck (from the nut to the bridge and back). He gives you the patterns starting with each of the box patterns, and each pattern is repeating. Once you have the pattern under your fingers, you can start anywhere within the pattern. Even learning one of these sets will help you fly across the fretboard.

The second section of the book give you 15 non-shifting sequences. These patterns move across the fretboard (from the sixth string to the first string and back), and stay within one position. Each of the patterns is presented in one box pattern, and it is up to you to move them to the other four fingerings.

The third section ties together the first two sections, in what is labeled side-shifting. These patterns not only move across the fretboard, but along the fretboard through three different box patterns as well. He ends this section with five whole neck studies.

There are two more sections, Hexatonic Studies and Dominant Pentatonic Runs, and I am sure I will get there eventually. There are also a couple of etudes at the end of the book that combine what you have learned in this book with some techniques from other books in the series.

I'll be honest, at first glance, the book isn't very exciting. I don't believe it is meant to be. The goal is to help you become more fluid with your pentatonics, and use them in a more musical way. There is nothing flashy about the book, and it's important to note that the author doesn't do the work for you. All the exercises are presented in a couple of different keys, and to get full use of the information, you need to move the patterns to the other keys yourself. He gives you recommended fingerings, but it is ultimately up to you to figure out what works best for yourself. What the author does do is give you a nice appendix with not only recommendations on how to use the book, but practice tips that will help with all your guitar playing. This book is definitely not a "be good at pentatonics overnight" course, and expect to spend a lot of time with it. Not a week or a month, but probably months or years. If you blaze through Fluid Pentatonics, then you are most likely already a pentatonic wizard. Don't get me wrong, you will start benefiting from the book right away, but it will take a long time before you can say you are done with it. The subtitle is 84 Melodic Studies for Rock Guitar, but the lessons are definitely not limited to rock. While the exercises in here are not overly complex or technical, that does not make them easy. It is probably better suited for guitarists with some experience, but a beginner should be able to integrate them into their routine with some guidance from a teacher, or a lot of patience. Again, just don't expect results overnight, because it will take some work. I would recommend it for anyone who wants to become more fluid and fast with their pentatonics, regardless of genre.

This isn't a review as much as a complaint. I have only just received my book and barely started working in it, and already I am frustrated with the ERRORS.

Why is it that method books are so poorly edited? I'm not terribly knowledgeable when it comes to playing guitar, so transcription errors can be deadly. We're not reading these books for entertainment-- as you would in a novel where a misspelled word is not that big a deal. This is a how-to, and if the editors gets it wrong, the students literally suffer.

I'm on exercise 1, measure 2, and already I'm trying to figure out what is intended.