Tangier Sound

Rather than fight with the HTML versions of my Creative-Commons licensed online books I have decided to go ahead and start putting them out in .pdf format.

Three years ago when I released these books into the wild .pdf was a fairly clunky and confusing format. It’s a much easier format to work with today – and, in keeping with the folk music ideal, there are free and open-source viewers available.

The first .pdf hitting the ‘net is A Book Of Five Strings.

Of Everything I have written, I think A Book Of Five Strings is the book I am proudest of. I wanted to present my craft in a way that didn’t put any stylistic limits on the student. The theme running throughout the book is creative freedom through mastery of simple skills and concepts.

In other words, improvisation.

The tricky thing here is that improvisation is not an action as much as it is a state of mind. That’s why I start out reminiscing about my mother and her sometimes mind bending ability to make something out of nothing. I also write about my experiences in the martial arts and the life-changing events that set me on the path of becoming a folk musician because in both cases I had to take what I knew (or thought I knew) and find another way to use it or rethink my perspective on things.

In other words, improvising.

The end result isn’t a how-to manual as much as it is a glimpse at how a folk musician visualizes his craft – but because of that the reader, hopefully, walks away with enough information to develop his or her own viewpoint.

Download A Book Of Five Strings. 1.6 MB .pdf document.

You can also access this file on archive.org

Ink & paper copies of this book are available from Pik-Ware Publishing and Amazon.com.