Barry Galbraith was a well-respected jazz guitarist who played with everyone from Miles Davis to Sarah Vaughan. Though he was generally not known outside of the jazz guitar community such as the likes of Wes or Metheny, he made an indelible mark on the instrument and has appreciated a wide range of great players who cite him as a direct influence.

The Jamey Aebersold Jazz publishing company released a five-volume series of Galbraith method books for jazz guitar study. Today I want to talk about Volume 2 in the series – Daily Exercises in the Melodic Minor and Harmonic Minor Modes.



As stated by Galbraith himself in the Introduction:

Many of my students, both amateur and professional, have come to me with an inadequate knowledge of the Melodic and Harmonic Minor Modes. The exercises in the book will prove helpful in mastering this very important material.

Excerpt from Barry Galbraith Melodic Minor Mode Exercise

That’s honestly about as much instruction as you get in the book. Although there are a more few pieces of insight and information given in the Introduction, Galbraith gets right to the heart of the matter by providing very lengthy exercises in many keys for both the Harmonic and Melodic Minor modes. Each exercise takes up two full pages!

Very minimal fingering and string suggestions are given for each exercise. I suspect, and this is just a guess, that Galbraith wanted users of the book to rely on their common-sense and their ears rather than bury themselves in the technical details of fingerings and his way of doing things.

I’ve gone through most of the exercises in the book, and I will say that not only is it a great way to get the sound of the modes in your ear and under your fingers, it’s also fantastic for sight reading practice! You will definitely give yourself a great reading workout!

There is not a whole lot to take apart from the book. It’s as straightforward as you will ever see and really gets to the heart of how I love to learn (and teach), which is just do it; over-analyzing can kill your ability to learn.

My suggestion would be to sightread through the exercise a few times at first, and then turn on the metronome at a very slow tempo and try to play through each one. Once you are able to play an exercise all of the way through you can work on phrasing and other aspects of your playing.

Whether or not you are trying to learn jazz, if you want some more sight reading material, or even if you are just looking for something new to check out and get under your fingers, Galbraith’s no-nonsense approach to learning the Harmonic Minor and Melodic Minor modes will absolutely challenge you and make you a better player by the time you are finished.

You can purchase this (and other) Galbraith books from the Jamey Aebersold Jazz website.