# Arpman dude from psycopus'es tapping book?



## XxXPete (Mar 10, 2010)

Anybody get it? Check it out? Etc..-Thanks


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## Malacoda (Mar 23, 2010)

I saw some pages from it. It looks good, but it's hard to see how an ENTIRE BOOK on tapping could be that great.


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## S-O (Mar 23, 2010)

He has a book?

Psyopus is sweet.

Looked it up, 30 bucks is a bit much for 25 pages. A PDF would suit me better as I just read straight from the comp/laptop.

I am cool with a just tapping book, he is super interesting. If it blew, then I would be pissed, but that's just normal!


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## dorfmeister (Oct 11, 2010)

I'm getting really interested in the scales and voicings book he has been listing on e-bay. $44 shipped. Pretty damned expensive.

EXPLODING FINGERS! PENTATONICS & VOICINGS FOR THE EXPRESSIONIS... - PSYOPUS's MySpace Blog |

eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices

Anybody checked this one out?

Here is the copy from the e-bay ad:

Thank you for checking out this second installment to my EXPLODING FINGERS instructional series. It was 6 MONTHS in the making! The purpose of this book is to enrich the playing and applicable theory ability of it&#8217;s readers. Also the purpose is to solve the common problem of being overwhelmed with the tsunami of musical strategies out there, especially in regards to soloing and improvisational playing. There have been many times in my music playing career I stumbled over too many different ways of playing chords, then too many ways of playing melodies over these chords, and even then playing through changing chords &#8211; diatonic and non-diatonic. I wanted to master these skills, but I was overwhelmed with where to actually start exploring these ideas, which of these ideas to stick with and develop, and what ideas to catalog for future focus. This whirlwind and lack of focus would not get me very far out of town, especially when concerning my improvisational playing or my longing to jam with friends. 

I believe I found some building blocks to these concepts and their method of study.

So what I did with this insight was to take the time to explore further into what I already understood about music. In doing so I would try to identify some generalities amongst it&#8217;s many variables. There are SO many different ways to voice a Major 7th chord. Then there are so many ways to play over this chord; arpeggios, different scales or modes, using &#8220;off&#8221; notes to create tension while setting up release in consonance, etc. Honestly, that list of melodic options alone can go on and on even while just staying within the confines of the major and natural minor scales found in the our circle of fifths. Forget about all of the more exotic scales out there. 

With all of these intricacies from scale to scale and voicing to voicing I knew there had to be some general concept that could be mastered that could help me get through all of these things at a competent level. The first step to this approach is the concept of pentatonic scales.

Pentatonic scales in a nut shell are five note scales. By removing the extra notes from the scales I&#8217;d been trying to master, it was easier for me to get a well rounded understanding of a scale that will actually work over a number of chords. Considering that many of these chordal voicings I am playing over are in a four note form, these five note scales could be considered arpeggiated versions of the chord just with an extra note. When you realize all of the pentatonic scales are played easily with two notes per string, it also makes it easier to develop a fluency in your technique while playing these notes - all while staying in a position. This contrasts some of the odd balled arpeggio patterns otherwise available. I also realized that the notes you play for one minor pentatonic scale &#8211; for example E, G, A, B, D over an E Minor 7 chord &#8211; will also work with other voicings &#8211; for example E, G, A, B, D (A, B, D, E, G) over an A Dominant 9 chord. This was an amazing discovery! After further investigation I realized by learning the 5 different patterns for 5 different pentatonic scales, in one way or another, I could play over ANY voicing found within the circle of fifths. I could leave memorizing modes and arpeggio patterns for another day within other free time and focus on getting ready for application and jamming! That&#8217;s EXACTLY what I had been looking to do.

The next step was to simplifying the chordal voicings approach. So what I did for the most part was decide on a standard approach, or mold, for putting my voicings together. Once I accumulated the established shapes for these voicings, I was just going to stick with these shapes. Now each single chord I approached had six to eight voicing shapes alone within this mold, but they where based on a certain philosophy I agreed on and that still narrowed the wide scope of voicings down exponentially. Also with these uniform shapes, the more I applied them on a regular basis, the more I would become familiar with them and 8 shapes really aren&#8217;t too bad. Some of the fingerings are slightly nuts in different positions, especially with the 9 chords, but I wanted to keep in mind that there are different sized hands, different sized guitars and different registers all over the fretboard. 

So lastly, now that I had narrowed down these musical tools into their most unified and useful form, I needed to come up with a practice regiment that would use all of these tools. It needed to be time conscience and efficient while covering all of these materials. It needed to digest the material in a spirited way. I came up with the idea of putting together a play along CD that follows along with a book that is filled with the knowledge I have organized. I assume if I could put an hour into practicing these ideas every day, that days would turn into weeks, weeks would turn into months, and then, after dedicated time to the subject, I would have a thorough understanding and foundation for a wide variety of harmonic and melodic situations. To me, this isn&#8217;t too far from what I expect it was like to learn how to speak, read, and write &#8211; regular exposure and application.

So with this book is a CD that you can follow along with your guitar and book with. As the CD plays a chord, you will have an available scale to follow. This chord will be followed by another chord and your scale will be followed by another scale in a similar position. You can also follow the chords by playing your different chordal voicing options. At first you may be a little overwhelmed with the shapes you see, but do the best you can. Maybe only play the notes on the first two strings and work up from there. Maybe only play a single voicing per chord. This is to be expected when learning something new. The idea is to keep it up for an hour everyday, and the next thing you know you&#8217;ll be familiar with most, then all of the patterns. Then you&#8217;ll be able to play along with the whole CD, in all of your positions, with all of the voicings &#8211; all while using creativity and feeling, not just robotic interpretation of material. The next step is to then play along with the CD without depending on the book as much, perhaps mixing scaler and chordal ideas together at the same time. Maybe even creating a hybrid between your newly developed understanding and other chops, licks, or patterns you&#8217;ve been working on outside of this routine. Keep it up and I can only imagine great success!!!

So there you go! Good luck! I hope this book works for you and your playing develops into a more rewarding experience. 

Shred!
Arpmandude


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## Explorer (Oct 12, 2010)

Although I've not looked at this particular item and might be posting in ignorance, I do have an observation...

I remember a few instruments on which I took lessons, including blues harmonica with the incomparable Phil Wiggins. (I was also lucky enough to take Piedmont blues guitar from his longtime partner John Cephus.)

I paid around $25 for a half hour lesson, and rather than waste time, I asked him to just lay out everything he wanted me to learn, with suggestions as to technique. I would go home and work the material thoroughly, would show him in a quick run-through, and then do the whole thing again.

After a month and a half, I warned him that I wanted one more lesson... and that I wanted him to break down as many of his licks as possibly by playing them once slowly and then at speed.

That lesson was the best investment I ever made in harmonica, and although I went on to develop my own style and sound, his licks showed me how to flow melodically on the harp.

If this tapping resource is the equivalent of that lesson with Phil, I could see buying it. I understand that people are used to having lots of pages in a book, but if it contains the nitty gritty of certain techniques, and if you can get a sense that the book would cover something you wanted to learn... then it sounds like a bargain for the cost of a large pizza with beer....


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## Gravity (Oct 12, 2010)

I can totally agree with what Explorer is saying here, I'd rather buy the book/cd if it was simply written as in ''here's the technique for this tapping section, play it slow, full speed should sound like this''. Rather then 300 pages of him blabbering on like a Windows 7 manual. 
The pages are short, but for some people like me short but precise explanations provide more motivation to tackle said lessons then something that is going to bore me and lose focus.


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## xJeremiahx (Oct 16, 2010)

I got to talk to Chris for a bit when my last band played with Psyopus a few years ago. In our talk...he lost me in the first 5 seconds and watching him play the stuff just made me feel stupid.


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## dorfmeister (Dec 13, 2010)

I've got the scales and voicings book now and I think it is pretty good. The cd is laid out so that you play the scales and voicings against it which I think is a pretty good idea for making it useful in practicing. I wish the recording quality was a little better. I'd like to see this guy put together more learning material and find a way of selling it a bit cheaper!



dorfmeister said:


> I'm getting really interested in the scales and voicings book he has been listing on e-bay. $44 shipped. Pretty damned expensive.


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## blastanus (Dec 26, 2010)

Well I bought the tapping book when it came out. There were some good stuff and some "bad" stuff, I'll break them down

The good:
-There were a shitload of exercises, and surely some of them gave me some insight to tapping I never had before
-There are exercises on scales and adding taps to them, I especially liked the way the pentatonic exercises were layed out in different keys
-Chordal, Counterpoint and Expression lessons were something that were somewhat a revelation to me, great exercises to "spice" up your playing sort of speak
- The lessons have quick changes in fingering positions and positions on the neck, so some of them are quite tricky to play fast, which I like 
-String skipping, arpeggios, scales, pedal points, huge intervals, Its all covered here!

The "bad"

-Some of the examples are there multiple times, for instance, he goes on to show how to play the F major scale 4 times, once on 3 string, then 4, 5, and 6. I think just putting the whole sequence on 6 strings would have been enough
-There are zero exercises on 8 finger tapping, at max its 6 fingers. This is something I actually thought would be covered and that arpman would use 8 finger tapping, but it is nowhere to be found on this!
-The songs he tabbed out. Now, seriously, NOBODY wants to play imogens puzzle part 1. Part two I would have understood, but imogen part one is such and obscure song with so obscure playing and time signatures, it really requires a lot of a person to play that. I rather he had tabbed out imogen part 2, as it is more melodic and elaborates on many many tapping ideas or the ultimate would have been insects, which is crazy, crazy playing!

BUT, the good far out weigh the bad, so I definitely recommend checking this shit out, and the price really isnt that bad! I personally wouldnt find anyone remotely near me who would have shown me even 30 % of whats covered here, plus arpman is the fucking shit and he deserves our support for truly pushing the boundaries of the instrument


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## dorfmeister (Dec 26, 2010)

I noticed he now has a sweep picking book out. I've got the scales and voicings book which is pretty good but it seems like the sweep picking arena is pretty full of horses. The scales and voicings material seemed a little more unique than another sweep picking book.

Anybody check it out?


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## scoot (Jan 2, 2011)

I've got the tapping book and the scalar exercises, and the first book really helped me change my tapping from 'cool noises' to harmonic runs, and i can do a lot more tapping over chords and in improv solos now. The other book just categorized the guitar a little more musically for me

I don't have any money to get the sweep one now thoughhhhh, bummer


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