Theory Goodies

[Mandophyte]

Dear All,

I've been struggling with this bit of wood and metal for 15 months, learnt a lot but wouldn't consider myself a musician yet.

However as I've never done anything musical before and have never considered myself to be musical I've had to look at ways to get my brain around quite a few things.

I've produced some "aids" which have helped me.

1) A look at patterns on the mandolin fret board

2) A Mandolin chord slide rule
(For the younger ones, the slide rule was the predecessor of the calulator.)

3) An aid with scales and reference info

This files are produced, not by a musician, but by a former engineering manager trying understand how music works. I hope they might help some of you

[pickloser]

Excellent work, John. Very helpful charts. As a primarily visual learner, this is the best way for this information to be presented for me to understand it. (The rootless dom 7s you show are my favourite shapes for those chords.)

[Bruce Clausen]

This is very impressive. I've only given it the quickest look, but it seems you've put it all into a very clear package that'll probably be very helpful to many players. One little quibble: I would avoid mixing "flat" names and "sharp" names in presenting the chords of a single key. The key signatures distinguish "flat" keys from "sharp" keys. (I'm looking at the 2nd page of the general theory aid.) One little error: secondary chords in E major should show G#m. There may be others. Many thanks for posting this.

BC

[solarbean]

That quadrangle grid is a nice reference for cittern (5-course) as well. Thanks for posting

[Mandophyte]

Bruce,
Thanks for the comments, I'll upload a corrected version later

[Mandophyte]

I've tried to see if I could edit the original post to replace the Aid, but couldn't.

Here's the corrected version:

[Ronny]

Very useful (especially the aid). Very good work (& congratulation !)

[billkilpatrick]

mandophyte - i've been knitting my brow in the face of this information for years ... maybe - just maybe ... this could be the night! graziemille!

ronny - great signature - a quote from sir thomas beecham, originator of many bon mots. i play bagpipes - so i don't know where that puts me in the scale of sociability.

[John McGann]

Took a quick look- well done! The 'engineering mind' is definitely useful in laying out the logic of the fingerboard, and using the triad as a basis is a great way to organize things.

[JeffD]

Very nice. And being an engineer myself, really cool.

One thing really curious to me is that you put all that together without out resort to the circle of fifths.

When I discovered the circle of fifths it finally all came together. It was such a big aha moment for me that I related everything to it. Especially because the mandolin is tuned in fifths, I worked out everything mandolin on that circle. I had that hand drawn circle with all the notes and arrows all on a piece of shelf paper that hung in my music room for years and years. It looked like some kind of mystical diagram from some secret society.


Good job. I am sure your charts will be taped to various music room walls around the world.

[Rob Gerety]

Great job. I can totally relate to how helpful it is to teach something. Teaching it is the best way to be sure you really understand it. I do this with the CAGED system on guitar.

But, with all due respect to a really fine effort, I'm going to stick to the circle of 5ths diagram I now have taped up on my music room wall! I think the circle concept is important.

[ApK]

But, with all due respect to a really fine effort, I'm going to stick to the circle of 5ths diagram I now have taped up on my music room wall! I think the circle concept is important.

Are they mutually exclusive for some reason? Or just not enough room on the wall?

[Rick Schmidlin]

Neat

[JeffD]

As of this email I have them all taped up

[Rob Gerety]

Are they mutually exclusive for some reason? Or just not enough room on the wall?

It the lack of room in my head that is the problem.

[gregjones]

Mandophyte's' avatar covers about 1/2 of most "how to play mandolin" books.

[ApK]

It the lack of room in my head that is the problem.

Rob, we put things on our walls so we won't HAVE to keep them in our heads!

And I agree about mandophyte's avatar...I was just thinking "Wow, that makes sense."

[Rob Gerety]

Rob, we put things on our walls so we won't HAVE to keep them in our heads!

Oh, ok. Maybe that will work. Sure isn't working trying to get it in my head.

[HddnKat]

Oh, ok. Maybe that will work. Sure isn't working trying to get it in my head.

Seems like the older I get, the more I have on my walls, and the less I have in my head... onset of CRS, perhaps?

[John McGann]

Yeah, but you can't take your wall to a gig as easily as your head (unless you live in a Magritte painting, in which case, how are you reading this without a computer?)

[groveland]

This guy would do away with all our cheat-sheets!

"...for this discovery [of writing] of yours will create forgetfulness
in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories;
they will trust to the external written characters and not remember
of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to
memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but
only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and
will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will
generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show
of wisdom without the reality."

- Plato, Phaedrus

[ApK]

There was a time when a man could know everything that was known.

[Coffeecup]

There was a time when a man could know everything that was known.

Yeah, when we were about sixteen wasn't it?

[Mandophyte]

Dear All,

Many thanks for your kind words.

[Bob Stolkin]

John,

This is cool, thanks. One question, sorry to be dense: I'm not getting the idea behind the 13-course width Fretboard pattern. How is this applied to my 4-course mando?