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- Verified Buyer
Pickow's book includes scale theory, practice patterns for all scales, and suggestions for how to practice scales. For a serious musician these pieces of information are very useful. I question the usefulness of this text for the average beginner. Pickow's attention to detail is important, but not really geared toward a beginner who plans to use this as the only source of information. This book would serve a music student well in his or her progress toward perfection, used in combination with regular lessons and practice. This book would also be a great information source for someone who has learned the basics and is ready to move on to challenging him or herself to understand more about music composition. But the beginner? There are better introductions than this to the bass.I realize the title is misleading-- "Step One", but the previous reviewer failed to notice that the same author and publisher have a book called "Step One: Play Beginning Bass" or something like that. This is "Step One: Play Bass SCALES." This is a GREAT book, but it is specifically geared towards understanding scales, and how they relate to bass playing. I actually wish they had extended it to include modes of jazz melodic minor, and some Eastern scales, but for the price, this book can't be beat!I purchased this book when I first began learning Bass. However I was to discover that it is not a book for beginners. It is very comprehensive, almost to fault. So much so that I would highly recommend it to a music student for deep study. However I still hardly use it and much prefer to refer to other, less confusing/comprehensive books.a great book very usefull