Guitarchitecture.org

3/22/12

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While the official version of this book has been released as both a print and PDF version, I’m leaving this page up  for historical purposes (and so that people who are interested in the book can get some more detailed information).   Print book orders can be ordered through LULU.com.

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Hello Everyone!  I’m going to detail the specifics of this below but here’s the synopsis.

 

In a promotional effort (and pseudo crowd funding experiment) to raise some money for the graphics/layout work that still needs to be done for the initial series of books getting released this year, I am selling a pdf of the preliminary GuitArchitect’s Guide To Modes: Melodic Patterns book for a special pre-release price of $10.  

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“The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Modes: Melodic Patterns, is a 338 page reference book of melodic permutations that will assist the reader in generating an almost infinite number of melodic cells and sequences. Applicable to guitarists and bassists, this book is an invaluable resource for both compositional and improvisational material.”

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People who purchase the discounted book during this promotional will also get a free digital copy of the final version of the book when completed as an additional thank you.

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For more information about ordering, just skip to the bottom of the page.  For those of you who want to know more about the book and the website, just keep reading…

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Transparent marketing

 

As an artist, I want to share my art with people.  As a person in a capitalist society, if I can support myself and make some money by sharing my art with people, it’s an ideal situation for me.

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As I’ve said before, the way to get people to part with their money is to get them to invest in themselves and their feelings.  If I have a unique approach to playing the guitar, and want someone to part with their money – they’re much more likely to do so if I can show them that my approach is one that can be beneficial to their playing.

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This approach is not rooted in deception; it’s simply a matter of perspective.  If I can give you something of value, it ultimately benefits both of us.   If a reader is engaged in what I’m presenting, they’re more likely to check out other things I’m doing because they may get something out of that as well.  I post things that I’m interested about, because if I’m passionate about them, other people might be as well.  In dedicating myself to completing this multi-volume series, I wanted to create books that I would have liked to have had when I first started playing, but could still get something new from reading now.  For me these books are doing that, and I hope that you’ll see them the same way.

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The GuitArchitecture Guide To Modes:

The GuitArchitecture book series is something I started working in on back in 2007-2008.  The approach uses a set of seven interconnecting modular fingerings that allow the player to visualize any mode of the major, melodic minor or harmonic minor scale on the entire guitar fretboard in an intuitive way.  The initial book, The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Modes, covers the fingerings and the application of the modes.   It’s very detailed, but editing it has been slow going and will not be done until the end of the year.

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As a kick in the pants for expediting this process, I will start publishing instructional excerpts from all of my books on the blog in the weeks and months ahead.

 

Please note:

One of my big pet peeves involves authors who rip people off by publishing their blog posts verbatim as a book.  While I will be posting a great deal of information on the blog, the posts will only be a fraction of the content of any of the books.   If I publish 20 pages online you can bet that there’s at least 200 more pages in the book to go over.

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The GuitArchitect’s Guide to Modes: Melodic Patterns

If you’ve ever looked at any instructional guitar material, you’ve probably come across some variation of the phrase, “Take this idea and transpose it to every other key”. In this book, I’ve taken a seed idea (a single two-string fingering for C Ionian) and then used a mathematical process called permutation, (which changes the sequence of how things are arranged) as a basis for creating unique melodic cells.

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This book not only details every possible permutation, but then goes on to show how to create every unique combination of them. These unique melodic cells can be used either on their own as compositional or improvisational ideas or combined with other melodic cells to create longer phrases.

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The Melodic Patterns book includes an overview of the visualization process detailed in the Guide To Modes book to get readers up to speed.   I’ve included jpegs of some of the pages from the Melodic Patterns book below.  Since the jpegs were converted from the pdf of the book, there’s some pixilation in the jpegs that is not present in the pdf but these will still give you an idea of what’s in the book.

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(Click on any graphic to see it as a larger size)

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Crowd funding and me

While I like the communal aspect of people helping to support artists through crowd funding, one of the difficulties in it for me is the delayed gratification for the investor.  Let’s say you pay $10 to an artist to go towards that artist’s recording budget and (if enough people invest to fund the project) then get a cd (or some other swag depending on the size of the contribution) when it’s done.  It could be a while before your CD comes in.  In some cases, if the project doesn’t get fully funded, you’re out entirely.

When I wanted to raise money for graphics work on the books, I also wanted a more immediate return for the investor.

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So here’s how this works.

There will be multiple books released this year (fingers crossed).  While their prices will all very depending on length,  as a ballpark figure:

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A digital copy of the final version of this book will run about $20.

A hard copy of the final version of this book will run about $38.

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The books are  (on average) 300 + pages of instruction and/or reference.  They’re a deep resource that you can turn to often for compositional or improvisational ideas.

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Ordering Info:

There are 2 pricing tiers for Melodic Patterns book pre-release pdf.  You can purchase either one by either clicking the buy it now button below.

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Tier 1: pdf only: $10

$10 gets you a link to preliminary pdf of the book and a free pdf of the final (polished) copy of the book when it’s done.

In the initial pdf, you’re getting 99% of the final version of the book minus some editing cleanups and graphic layout updates that will all be present in the free update.

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Tier 2: pdf /hardcopy: $31 * (lower 48 states US only)

$31 gets you a link to preliminary pdf of the book and a free hardcopy of the final (polished) copy of the book delivered to your door (in the lower 48 states) when it’s done.  (For orders outside the US just send me an email to for shipping pricing).

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What’s Next?

Next week, I’ll start posting excerpts from the Mode book and the  Melodic Patterns book online.  The Positional Exploration book will be available in September and the Harmonic Combinatorics book will be out in October.  In additional news, the 12 tone improv book that’s currently up on Amazon is getting revamped with a guitar specific twist!!  Look for it in 2012!

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If you’d like to find out more about GuitArchitecture, you may want to check out these posts as well.

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TWO STEPS BACK OR SETBACKS IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

GUITARCHITECTURE, SONIC VISUALIZATION AND A PENTATONIC APPROACH FOR THE HOLIDAYS

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Finally, I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone for their support.  I know that reading the posts here is sometimes as labor intensive as posting them and your attention is appreciated.  As I said about the books, I’m striving to create content that represents something that I would be psyched to find on the web and hopefully it evokes a similar reaction in you as well.

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Thanks for reading!

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-SC