Question on Chord Fingering Boxes, A or B?

Hi all, ok we are working on the layout of the chord pages and a question came up on the design of the Chord Fingering Boxes. I originally thought that I would highlight the root notes of a chord in red. The root note of the A chord is A, the other notes are C# and E. The illustration above shows the chord fingering box for the Mandolin A chord. Some like the root notes highlighted in red and others didn't. I would love you to select your favorite, A or B. The numbers indicate which finger.

Please select your choice in the poll over on the top right corner, A or B, thank you

Mandolin Photo Chord Book, Initial Design Concept

Thanks everyone who made comments and voted on my mandolin chord pictures, Photo A's view was the clear winner but there was also a strong vote for using both photos in the book. Above is an image with my first pass for the page design of the new chord photo book. I would love any comments on it good or bad. I will reshoot the photos but they will be along this line. 

 The thought is to include a variety of ways to show chords, pictures, fret board, chord box, staff lines and TAB lines.  FPO means for position only, I don't have that image at the moment but that is where one would go.

Photo A and Both Are Winners for the View Poll

Thank you everyone who voted on the photo poll to help us figure out which view we should show for our upcoming chord book project. I took a picture of an A mandolin chord from the top and from the front. Posted them here on this blog and on Facebook and the top view won by a big margin. Coming in second was the option of showing both views the top and from the front.
Total of 53 votes
35 people for photo A from the top, 66%
6 people for photo B from the front, 11%
17 people for both photos, 32%

These images will be shown along with chord fingering illustrations in a new expanded chord book I am working on. We also had some great comments on the poll and especially on can we adapt this project for left handed players. I will keep you posted on the project progress.

Which Photo Works Better for Showing a Chord A or B? Click on the Poll at Right

I have started working on a new expanded chord book which will include new photos of all the essential chords along with fingering charts, TAB and notes on a staff. It is a big project and will take a while to pull together but I have started.
Because there are so many photos I want to get them right so we are asking for your help before I start shooting them. We are starting with the mandolin and the above photos are of the A chord.

Which type of picture do you think works best, from the top (Photo A) or from the front (Photo B), you can click in the poll to the right?

Mandolin Moveable Arpeggio Scale for Any Key

Page from our Essential Chords for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo book of our moveable arpeggio scale for any Mandolin Key. This chart allows you to use arpeggios for doing solos. This movable chart will work for any key as it can be moved up and down the fret board.

Songs for mandolin, (amazon affiliate link)

Essential Chords, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele & Banjo Video

We have been working on videos for our books for YouTube, Facebook and the blog, here is our latest for our Essential Chords for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele & Banjo book.

Banjo Chords with G Tunings from Our New Book, Essential Chords

Banjo Chords for G Tuning. A page from our new book Essential Chords, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo. Banjo tunings usually come in one of two tunings, G or D. We include a fingering chart for both in the book that show the major, minor and 7 chords for the banjo. You can see all of our chord and music fingering charts at www.acousticmusictv.com.

Time for Stats on Marketing Essential Chords, April

Ok I have been working hard on the marketing of my new Essential Chords Book for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo, sales are up on Amazon.com, page rank is up, progress all around. I have also been very busy putting together the different materials I will need such as images and videos. I have loaded up some author videos on my Amazon author page, and I need to finish the text for the YouTube video and I will get them up.

Ok Stats on Essential Chords and the older book Notebook Music Chords,
Amazon sales of Essential Chords for March, 3 copies
Amazon sales of Notebook Music Chords for March 4 copies, marketing one book has sparked the other, sales are about 1 a week, the goal is to get them to 1 a day.

Sales rank on Amazon for Essential Chords went from 1,175,775 to 1,273,564 on March 31, and then today to 300,000, in the last two weeks it jumped as high as 185,000, I guess these move around a lot
Notebook Music Chords went from 871,112 to 713,168
Sales on Lulu.com for Notebook Music is 6 books and 1 pdf sold, little confused but I think it is for the year. Need to move Essential Chords to Lulu.com also

CafePress sold 5 music items, increasing the traffic on AcousticMusicTV increases sales on all the items.
Traffic on AcousticMusicTV.com our main site has jumped from 95 a day to 159 a day
on this blog, it has gone down a little 43 down to 35, bounce rates are in the 50s%

Tasks complete, videos shot and edited, need to be put up on YouTube, page images made and loaded on the Facebook page, Flickr and Google Picassa, weblinks on all, keyworded captions on all.

To do: write video copy and upload book videos, then cross link to all sites, update email list graphics and fix the AWeber account and the autoresponder emails, add graphics and more post to blog, get new sheet music books on AcousticMusicTV.com and the blog, make graphics for sheet music books.

J. Bruce Jones' photostream

J. Bruce Jones' photostream on Flickr.

New Images from our Essential Chord Book for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele, and Banjo