Major Chords for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele & Banjo, Sign Up for Series

It has been a busy winter at Acoustic Music TV, we have released several new books from our new Left Hand Chords, two new sheet music books, the update to Essential Chords and 3 new posters with Guitar, Mandolin and Ukulele chords. We also have a nice new series of free chord and music pages that you can sign up for and receive. Today we begin with releasing some these charts so you can see what is in the series and sign up if you like.

If you want to receive the series sign up over on the right in the sign up box. In the future we have a new songwriting workbook coming and blank sheet music journal.

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NEW! Essential Chords for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo, 2nd Edition

We are pleased to announce the release of our new 2nd edition of Essential Chords for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo. Lots of changes and updates, new size, 4 and 5 string banjo chords, and we also have an iPad version.

Book Description
Essential Chords for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo, Second Edition is an updated version of the original popular chord chart book for the beginning music player. Essential Chords contains fingering charts for guitar, mandolin, ukulele and banjo chords and a variety of other music charts for playing rock, folk, country and blues music. Now in a new, larger size, updated and with new 4 and 5 string banjo tunings, this is the perfect resource for every player.

Simple, clean, easy to read fingering charts for all players showing the 7 basic Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo chords, A-G for Major, Minor and 7th chords. Includes the I, IV, V chord progressions for each key. Plus movable Guitar fingerings for barre chords, arpeggio scales, and soloing scales for folk, country, rock and blues, and movable Mandolin arpeggio scales. The charts are designed to be easy to read and follow.

Essential Chords includes blank sheet music and chord box pages for each instrument that you can photocopy. Each sheet music page has the lines spread apart for ease in writing down your music.

Chord and Music Charts in the Book
• The Seven Basic Guitar Chords, Major, Minor and 7th

• The Seven Guitar Keys with I, IV, V and V7 Chords

• Guitar Barre Chords
• Major Movable Soloing Scale for Folk or Country Music for Any Key

• Minor Pentatonic Movable Soloing Scale for Blues, Rock or Latin Music

• Movable Arpeggio Scale for Any Guitar Key

• Guitar Power Chords

• Diminished Guitar Chords

• Augmented Guitar Chords

• Sus2 and Sus4 Guitar Chords

• Mandolin Chords, Major, Minor and 7th
• Mandolin Two Finger Chords

• The Seven Mandolin Keys with the I, IV, V and V7 Chords

• 2 Finger Mandolin Chords for a I, IV, V Progression

• Movable Arpeggio Scale for Any Mandolin Key

• Ukulele Chords, Major, Minor and 7th

• The Seven Ukulele Keys with the I, IV, V and V7 Chords in First Position

• Banjo Chords, 5 String, A, C, Double C, D and G Tunings Major, Minor and 7th

• Banjo Chords, 4 String, Standard, Celtic/Irish and Chicago Tunings, Major, Minor and 7th

• Blank Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo Sheet Music and Chord Boxes





Available at Amazon.com

New Double C Tuning Chart for 5 String Banjo

Here is the last of the new banjo chord charts, this rounds out a collection of five tuning charts for the banjo. D, G, A, C-Standard, and Double C. These will be a great addition to the revised edition of Essential Chords coming out soon. Every chart in the book will now also have a matching Key chart, highlighting the I, IV, V and V7 chords. Along with an expanded page size and some other tweaks it should make for a great update. Here is the Double C banjo chart

5 String Banjo Chord Chart for Double C Tunings, g C G C D. As always we love comments and suggestions. Make sure you are signed up in our mailing list so you can get the details of when it releases. We will be offering a special gift with each book. And just a hint, once this book is done we will be working on a version for left handed players. A little late getting it out but it is coming.

New Banjo Chord Chart, C Tuning, or Standard Tuning

Below is another chord chart from the upcoming Essential Chords for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo. This is a 5 string Banjo chord chart in C Tuning. This summer I learned basic banjo with Riley Baugus at the Summer Acoustic Music Week camp run by WUMB in Boston. The camp is held twice each summer on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, great time. Riley was excellent, I also took his Round Peak Banjo class which was really interesting on the music of the Round Peak area of North Carolina. Anyways here is the second of 3 new charts.

 

5 String Banjo Chord Chart for Standard C Tuning from the upcoming 2nd edition of Essential Chords for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo. Make sure you are on the list for notice of the special offer when the book goes on sale.

New 5 String Banjo Chords, A Tunings

Oh, it has been a while, we have been very busy and haven't been able to do much blogging, but we have some great news. I have been hard at work on a new revised version of Essential Chords book. I have increased the size a little, up to 8.5 x 11, trimmed up the pages and added a bunch of new banjo chord charts. I went to guitar camp this summer and took a class in banjo and learned about some chords I should add. I still have work to do on the book but this will give you a sample of the A tuning chords for 5 string banjo. The book is coming, getting closer every day, we are also going to have special offer when the book goes on sale. I will let you know as we get closer.

5 String A Tunings banjo chords, a E A C# E. Each chord sheet will now have a matching Key sheet with the 1, 4, 5 chords.

Summer Acoustic Music Week, SAMW, and iPad Chord Book

I have been so busy lately working on a ton of projects. One that is just about done is an iPad version of my Essential Chords book. I have basically rewritten then entire book because I discovered something about my book and iPads. Ebooks seem to work best when each page is the same direction. If you have seen our Essential Chords book you will see some pages are vertical and some pages horizontal, well that is cool and it works nice but not on an ereader. You end up having to turn and turn the ereader as you chase the page around the reader getting it to read correctly. So what I have done is reconfigure every page back to a vertical format.

The second thing I have done is to add in tons of new charts especially banjo chords. I have tried to set up each instrument with the basic chords and their 1, 4, 5 chords for each key so you can figure out the basic structure. So the Key of A has the 1 chord, the A, the 4 chord the D and the 5th chord the E and also the 7th version of that chord, so E7. I have now gone through all of the 4 instruments and done this for each key. Including the banjo for both 5 and 4 strings. It took way longer than I thought, but it is just about done. I had promised to make a left hand Essential Chord book but I needed to fix this first, and it took a while. Now I can convert this book over to a left hand version.

Ok number 2, SAMW, what is this? SAMW (WUMB - Summer Acoustic Music Week) is just the best adult music camp, this will be my 10th or 11th time, I can't quite remember. It is run by the Boston folk radio station WUMB and is held up in New Hampshire, in July, and again in August. About 100 students, 20 faculty, classes, workshops, performances. Songwriting, playing, sound, performance, great swimming and dancing. It is a great time. Next week I am off for a vacation of playing music.

Anyways when I get back I will be figuring out how to release the new iPad version, it came out pretty cool and get to work on the left hand version and a bunch more ideas.

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.

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.

Marketing Plan for Essential Chords, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele & Banjo

We have started the marketing for our latest book, Essential Chords, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo, and thought it might make for an interesting study. I have been using the web and social media for quite a while now in all kinds of areas but this will be the first for promoting my own book.  Our book is up on Amazon.com and starting to sell, I have just built a Facebook page, we have a website, this blog and several other sites. So below are the notes from the Marketing plan. Going public like this help keep me on track and see what we can do.
 

Task List for the Marketing Plan for Essential Chords Book

Goal

To increase the sales of Essential Chords, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo Book on Amazon and other sites.
Goal to get the sales rank under 500,000 and ultimately under 100,000

Essential Chords  Current sales are about 1 book a week, with a sale rank of 1,175,775

Notebook Music Chords  Current sales are about 1 book every 2 to 3 weeks, with a sales rank of 871,112

Method/Plan

Build a wagon wheel of promotional sites, images and video that bring traffic into AcousticMusicTV.com and out to Amazon. Show the features and benefits of the book. Mostly updating and adjusting current set of sites for the new book and adding promotional material out on the web. Try to add in additional books into the stream.

Promotion will be for Essential Chords book, which is an updated and renaming of the previous book Notebook Music Chords, I won't be taking Notebook Music down but will watch it and see what happens to it.

Baselines for Measuring Progress

Establish the current base line visitors numbers for, you have to know where you start to see if anything works, here are the current stats as of March 19.
  Sales on Amazon of Essential Chords in March, 1 book a week,
   Sales rank on Amazon for Essential Chords March 19, #1,175,775

   Sales on Amazon of Notebook Music Chords in March, 1 book every 2 weeks or so
   Sales rank on Amazon for Notebook Music Chords, March 19, #871,112

   Sales on AcousticMusicTV for Cafepress music items, Jan-March, 3 items per/month, $6 average, watch for increase traffic to boost gift sales.

   Sales on Lulu for Notebook Music Chords in March, 3 units since mid February

   Sales of Guitar and Mandolin sheet music books on Lulu, 0 sales

   Scribd, 40 reads/month
  
Basic Google Analytics as of March 19
   AcousticMusicTV.com, 95 visits/day, visit 3 pages, bounce rate 52%, Top Keyword- Mandolin Chords, Google
   AcousticMusicTV blog, 43 visits/day, visit 1.73 pages, bounce rate 57%, Top Keyword-Banjo Chords, Google
   NotebookMusicChords Blog, 15 visits/day, visit 1.8 pages, bounce rate 59%, Top Keyword-2 finger mandolin chord, Google
  

Marketing Materials

Make a basic set of graphics for Essential Chords, cover, couple of interior, some instruments, etc
Shoot some basic book promo pictures
Pull together the basic book description
Create picture files of pages and book for Flickr, Picassa, Facebook, blog

Finish Essential Chords Major Chords sampler book for promo

Make up book graphics for the website

Edit customer quotes that have come in for Notebook for use as needed

Websites

Set up Facebook page for acousticmusictv, what name should the page be?
Update AcousticMusicTV.com with Essential Chords Book
Take down current AMTVWeb site and replace with new sampler, replace cover on email sign up boxes

Set up a book page on blog, AcousticMusicTV.blogspot,com and NotebookMusicChords.com
Set up Hub Page, Squidoo Pages

Email List

Fix the signup on web site and the 2 blogs
Take down current autoresponer series and update with new book and links
Develop some email blast to list

Video

Make promo videos for all three books, the chord book and the 2 blank sheet music books, put on YouTube, websites and blogs

Other Stuff

Reconfigure and upload Essential Chords to lulu.com, paper bound and spiral bound, connect to bookstore
Take down the Notebook Chord book on scribd, put up the Essential sampler book
Set up a free pdf version for anyone who buys a physical version of the book

Social Media

Post about the process
Post on Facebook different pages, videos, lessons,
Post on Twitter different stages of the process and other posts
Cross link everything

Track the Analytics, Amazon, Lulu and Facebook visitors and sales.

Banjo Chord Charts in G Tuning

Our Banjo chords are here for both G and D tunings. Check out the above chart for Banjo Chords in G Tuning. The Banjo is essential in everyones Bluegrass band. Download and 3 hole punch for your jam note book. Available for Free after signing up on the form to the right.

Free Banjo Chords in D

Our Banjo chords are here. Above check out our Banjo Chords in D Tuning. Download and 3 hole punch for your jam note book. The Banjo is essential in everyones Bluegrass band, so download and enjoy. Available for Free after signing up on the form to the right.

Banjo Chord Sheets Coming Shortly

Look at this cool picture from 1856, The Banjo Player by William Sidney Mount, pretty neat. Summer has finally arrived in the north east and we are finished with all the end of school year stuff, so back to working on Acoustic Music TV.

We have several new chord sheets coming, a banjo sheet in G tuning, a guitar blank chord sheet and a mandolin blank chord sheet. With the blank chord sheets you can write in your chords for a great way to jot down a song when you are in a hurry.

We also have a new AMTV show coming with the music of Gerry Ryan, finishing up editing should be soon. Thanks everyone for all the great comments and look for the Banjo sheet shortly.

Free Chord Charts for Major Guitar Keys

Above is our new pdf jam book Guitar Chord key chart. Includes all 7 keys with I, IV,V and V7 chords with fingering for each key. To see more check out the free Quick Chord Chart for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele an Banjo over on the right. Part of the collection of chord and music chart from Essential Chords for Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele and Banjo which includes major chords for guitar, mandolin, banjo and ukulele. Also check out the mandolin chord charts and blank sheet music pages. To learn more also check out AcousticMusicTV.com

Mel Bay's Guitar Chords book and DVD, affiliate link.