M3 Guitar 1.0 is based on the idea of making the concepts used in jazz accessible to everyone by using an analogy with cars and traffic. Entertaining though this might be, it is not very helpful to someone who wants to learn to play a guitar tuned in major thirds. Today, more than 15 years after the release of 1.0, version 3.5 is intended as a practical guide for those who are genuinly interested in converting from the conventional tuning to the major thirds tuning, or even better, those who are prepared to jump straight into a symmetric tuning without any previous knowledge or prejudice about the guitar.
The M3 Guitar site is created and maintained by Ole Kirkeby, an amateur guitarist orginally from Copenhagen, Denmark. I am an engineer by trade, with a background in academia. I have an M.Sc. from the Technical University of Denmark, and a Ph.D. from the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton, UK. In addition, I have had brief spells at Aalborg University, Denmark, and Tokyo Denki University, Japan. In year 2000 I moved to Helsinki, Finland, in order to start a job at Nokia Research Center, and I still live in Helsinki. I am originally a drummer but I switched to guitar after I moved to the UK in 1991. In 2007 I started to collaborate with other musicians on the internet using the artist name m3roadworx. Some of the projects I have been working on are listed on my profile page at Kompoz. Outside work and music I am a keen tennis player and recreational runner, and I do physical exercise almost every day. Finally, I like small sports cars and I am trying to make the most of it here in Finland where I don't have to pay the ridiculous Danish taxes.
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For the foreseeable future I will work on my personal website m3roadworx.com.
It is by far the biggest single addition of examples, and it is something I have been working on for years. It is somewhat exotic, and it probably won't appeal to too many people. Nevertheless, I consider it to be a big thing and it is unique to the major thirds tuning, or at least a symmetric tuning. It is pretty much impossible to play in standard tuning.
Added another 6 x 24 = 144 examples in Single-Note Runs -> Pentadominant. Also added a section on Directional Picking in Onboard The M3 -> Technique -> Right Hand -> Picking.
Link to version 2.5 has been removed from the menu at the top of the page. The content is still online so direct links work but I'd rather remove it completely.
A massive revision and update of every single page, diagram, and example.
What is new?
What has disappeared?
I intend to get rid of version 2.5 relatively soon. It does not contain anything that is not available in 2.0 or 3.0.
Now applicable to both 6- and 7-string guitars!
There are, of course, lots of minor edits to ensure that the content makes sense for both 6- and 7-string guitars. The recordings and the videos are not updated, only the transcriptions. In the long term I am probably going to phase out the 7-string because it is not realistic to maintain two versions of the examples.
Just a quick note to explain why the section 'M3 Recommends' has been removed. I have got fed up with albums I want to feature have disappeared from the eMusic catalogue. This evening I found out that albums I have previously downloaded by Kaipa, Planet X, Shadow Gallery, and Derek Sherinian are no longer available. That obviously also means I don't know when any of my previous recommendations turns into a blind link. It is just too much hassle for me to give eMusic free advertising under those conditions.
The inconsistency pointed out in January, "Please note that in Single-Note Runs the example groups pentatonic0, hexatonic, and pentadominant need to be updated", is fixed.
On the home page I have added a link to m3guitar on Twitter for those who would like to find out immediately when I update the site.
A major update.
Some changes in the menu at the top.
Please note that in Single-Note Runs the example groups pentatonic0, hexatonic, and pentadominant need to be updated, and the example groups hexatonic 1-6 and pentadominant 1-6 are not created yet (it requires a huge amount of work so please be patient).
New link added to a social network I have set up at ning.com. The Forum and the Guestbook are removed since they received very little interest anyway, and to make matters worse they have given me terrible problems with spamming right from the start.
New link, M3 Roadworx, in the menu at the top to a separate page dedicated to the recordings I make on my own and in collaboration with others on the internet.
New section on Solo Arrangements added to Onboard the M3. Ten examples, each classified as either simple or advanced, are made available as mp3 audio, streaming video and mp4 download, and tablature in several formats.
A minor update, mostly about making videos available for streaming so that download of the huge mp4 files is no longer necessary (not to mention installation of the mp4 codec which Microsoft, in the interest of incompatibility, has left out of their Media Player).
New section on Accompaniment added to Onboard the M3. Ten examples of strumming with the pick made available as mp3 audio, mp4 video, and tablature in several formats. This is the beginning of a shift away from the niche 'jazz' label. From now on I am going to make an effort to show that the M3 is suitable for all styles of music.
Some minor changes.
The Yabb forum is taken down and a new forum is created with SMF which has better control over registration. I got fed up with wasting time on keeping the russian spammers out, and in the end I gave up on Yabb.
The following sections are expanded.
Single-Note Runs is added to Onboard the M3. It contains four sections.
The use of each of the three main scales is demonstrated with 3 x 25 recordings and transcriptions.
The three main sections contain the following pages.
There are no transcriptions or recordings yet, and it is unacceptable to be without those for very long. The next update will contain 60 or 70 examples, in total, of single-note runs that use the three fundamental symmetric scales: pentatonic, hexatonic, and pentadominant. Thinking a bit further ahead, I also want to add sections on the bebop scale as well as altered dominant chords and scales, chord progressions, accompaniment, and solo guitar. In the distant future I would like to include outside playing and intervallic soloing.