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For 6- & 7-String in Standard & Uniform Tunings
Introduction
 
 
These pages are analogous to a sort of instruction manual on basic inks and how an illustrator may precisely discharge them from his or her pen.  It doesn't treat the subject of what he or she would illustrate or why, doesn't intend to treat composition or style, doesn't examine how to evolve to the use of color, and doesn't discuss message, expression, or art.  It's a very complex sort of pen, though, that can draw dynamic, fleeting, and rhythmic multi-dimensional images in the eyes of all persons in a room.  This complexity is the distinguishing difficulty and advantage of performed art forms such as music, and explains the necessity of a whole book for even just the rudiments of the fundamentals.

The investigation of the nature of harmony on one's instrument can be a life-long joy, but the participant may consider also enjoying, according to his or her desire, the many other aspects of a musical life, e.g. ear-training, theoretical and compositional studies, the details of particular musical works and artists, their context and meaning, and all manner and degree of social, didactic, creative and spiritual involvement and activity.  Much can be learned, especially regarding rhythm and style, from simply learning the music one loves.  This book may introduce one to how to play guitar, but it's possibly another thing to be a musician, and definitely another still to be an artist--a messenger.

The simple things, the essences, are the great things, but our way of expressing them can be incredibly complex....  You try to express a simple emotion--love, excitement, sadness--and often your technique gets in the way.  It becomes an end in itself when it should really be only the funnel through which your feelings and ideas are communicated.  The great artist gets right to the heart of the matter.  His technique is so natural it's invisible or unhearable.

BILL EVANS
"Bill Evans" by Don Nelson, Down Beat Magazine, Sep. 1960

Art is conscious expression.  Expression is part of every human act, but for an act to be art, the expression must be deliberate.  That is, the performer is an artist--and the performance is art--only to the degree that the performer is conscious of what is being expressed by the work.

The terms of the expression are dependent upon the limits of the medium and the form.  The medium, form and terms of a work of art are all choices of the artist, and their degree of success in facilitating the intended expression is the result of the quality of the artist's deliberation.  That is, the more options considered, and the more clearly they are understood, then the more specific and deliberate--and therefore the more clearly and consciously expressive--are the choices of the artist.  The terms, form and even medium of the work may be ambiguous; but the choice for them to be so may not.  The choices may even be made automatically, reflexively or subconsciously, but these methods especially require facility over as many options as possible, because the automatic/reflexive/subconscious choices tend to be limited to choices that the artist understands and has well-conditioned.  If these choices are few, the results may be superficial and programmatic.

The methods of making educated and expressive choices automatically, reflexively or subconsciously especially come into play in improvised art--art composed as it is performed.  Improvised art forms are conducive to the truest expression for the following reasons:

1.  Each moment of reality and consciousness is necessarily unique.  What the great artist chooses to express may also be unique at each moment, and too complex to ever formalize adequately for all future performances.

2.  The present is truer than the past (because our experience of the past is really a category of the present).  Expressing the present (even if it's nostalgic) is truer than trying to express the past.

I humbly give this spiritual imperative to you:  Increase your consciousness of the instrument you've chosen, and of why you've chosen it; and of how you tune it, and why.  As far as you are your own person, your choices cannot be purely conventional; and as far as you are an artist, your choices cannot be ambiguous.

If you choose to play guitar, there are many patterns to tune it to and play it in.  Which you use must be your choice, and I hope that this book will help to make that choice an informed one.  This book compares methods for possibly the three most useful tunings, at least for attempting to play in any key and potentially improvise.

  
Introduction to Standard Tuning
Introduction to All 4ths Tuning
Introduction to Major 3rds Tuning
 

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