Guitar Workout: Speed Picking, Sweeps, Arpeggios & Harmony for the Modern Guitarist

By: Dr. Matt Warnock

Click to Buy Guitar Workout from Amazon.com

Having a strong grasp of right and left hand technique, as well as a fundamental understanding of the building blocks of music, chords-scales-arpeggios, is an essential ingredient in the development of any successful guitarist. In itself, the guitar is an innately technical instrument. One that is built on shapes (chord grips, scale patterns etc.), and that lends itself to the in-depth study of countless scale permutations, finger gymnastics and other technical aerobics.

Though we all know that we need to work on bettering our technique, guitarists of all levels often struggle to find the right exercises to practice, that will maximize our ability and time in the practice room. With this issue in mind, guitarist and educator John Heussenstamm has delivered an extensive treatise on the subject of guitar technique, Guitar Workout: Speed Picking, Sweeps, Arpeggios and Harmony for the Modern Guitarist.

This technical tome is divided into five sections:

• The Major Scale
• Arpeggios
• Modes and Other Scales
• Pentatonic Scales
• Special Guitar Techniques

Each section is then broken down further to explore each larger topic in greater detail, such as the sub-sections on Harmonic and Melodic Minor, Diminished and Whole-Tone scales that make up the Modes and Other Scales chapter. As well, every sub-section is thoroughly explained with easy to follow text, and followed up with dozens of musical examples written in both tablature and standard notation.

My hat goes off to Heussenstamm and the folks at Hal Leonard for including notation in this book. Too often notation is passed over in similar books because publishers don’t think guitarists care to, or even can, read standard notation. Maybe the problem isn’t that we don’t want to read notation, maybe the problem is that publishers don’t give us the chance in the first place? OK I’ll get off my standard notation soapbox now, back to the book.

As the title suggests, the exercises in this book are intended to provide an extensive workout for the modern guitarist. For this reason the examples in the book cover a wide variety of genres such as rock, metal, jazz, blues and funk. It’s really hard to write a book for the guitarist, who likes, and plays, multiple genres.

Too often books are aimed at one specific group or another, but Heussenstamm does a great job of touching on these different genres. This not only provides material for fans of any one of these musical realms, it also exposes readers to musical snippets and exercises from genres that they would normally never explore, perhaps providing the initial spark that leads to a new musical journey down the road of a previously unexplored musical genre.

Guitar Workout provides an extensive look into the subject of modern single-line playing, so if you’re looking for a book on modern harmony and chord vocabulary this isn’t the book for you. As well, the accompanying CD is a welcomed study aid as it provides aural accompaniment for many of the musical examples in the book, something that readers who prefer to learn by ear will find very helpful.

If you’re looking to take your technical prowess on the guitar to the next level, or are just bored with your current technical workout, check out Heussenstamm’s book. If nothing else, it’ll provide countless hours of exercises that, if practiced properly, can’t help but raise your technical ability as a single-line player.