INFINITE SONGBOOK

An approach to Music that amuses the Muses

INFINITE SONGBOOK VIDEO INSTRUCTIONS ARE AVAILABLE ON THE YOUTUBE

THEY ARE CALLED

INFINITE SONGBOOK VIDEO INSTRUCTIONS

The Infinite Songbook is a DECK OF 72 CARDS small enough to fit in your instrument case. It can serve many purposes, and so has various modes of approach depending upon your current level of musical skill and understanding.

In its most simplistic form, it shows (in easy to read symbols) the chord structure and the basic anatomy of 5 different common instruments: Guitar, Ukulele, Mandolin, Banjo, and Piano. As you learn one (or all) of these instruments, gameplay will evolve and become a way to explore different harmonic intervals between chords and also just a way to better understand scales, modes, and music theory in general.

The Infinite Songbook will continue to change as you do, and become something like a musical Tarot or I Ching. The cards will begin interacting with the forces of destiny to produce a specific chord progression for YOU in this unique place in space and time to play. It MEANS something.

Then it will reach its full potential and encourage you to start bending fate as it becomes a Song Composing Device, allowing any kind of alterations you deem necessary to the displayed chord progression(s). With the help of pen and paper, other rounds of drawing cards can produce any number of “movements” by cleverly weaving and editing these new progressions into the existing progression, of this, your embryonic song.

But BEWARE of songs, they have a dangerous gravity that can trap musicians in endless orbits of repetition. Which will bring us to the final mode of the Infinite Songbook, as it is applied in a complex social context, at a party where people have been encouraged to bring musical instruments. Here it is simply used to form a non-territorial place to start a Jam. Repeated songs that people always play in these situations are like “speeches”, in this mode musicians are encouraged not to recite “speeches” but to to have musical “conversations” with each other. Sounds hard? Not if you have been playing the Infinite Songbook…plus, the information of how to play each note/chord is right there on its card for you and others to reference. Everyone is invited to listen and find the invisible sonic graph-paper tempo, and then “noodle” along on beat- composing their own individual strands of music that weave into the sonic tapestry. Ideally the cards will then be forgotten and used as a mere point of departure for the unwritten grooves now cycling through the air as they evolve in unpredictable and beautiful directions. These musical threads can create positive experiences and genuine bonds between different types of people from different walks of life who might not otherwise interact. Play the Infinite Songbook and SEE.