About this site

The M3 Guitar v.1.0 site 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 terribly helpful to someone who wants to learn to play a seven-string guitar tuned in major thirds. Nevertheless, even though the original site looks somewhat dated I am going to leave it online since I believe it works well as a self-contained package. Now, six years after the release of v.1.0, the M3 Guitar v.2.0 site is available as a practical step-by-step guide to 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. This is not for the faint-hearted. I am targeting the people who are willing to buy new equipment and practice hundreds of hours in order to learn the M3.

Yours truly

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. I currently work at Nokia Research Center in Helsinki, Finland. I am originally a drummer but I switched to guitar after I moved to the UK in 1991. In my sparetime I am a keen tennis player and recreational runner. Cars are another interest of mine. I go for small sports cars (because they are the only ones I can afford), and I am trying to make the most of it in Finland where I don't have to pay the ridiculous Danish taxes.


Version History

August 1st, 2010

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.

April 3rd, 2010

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.

January 1st, 2010

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).

July 14th, 2009

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.

March 24th, 2009

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.

February 15th, 2009

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.

January 25th, 2009

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).

July 5th, 2008

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.

April 21st, 2008

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.

January 2nd, 2008

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.

First Release of Version 2.0, November 2007

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.