Keys, Codes and Modes - Volume 1 A Visual Method and Graphic Approach to Understanding Music

The intention of this resource is to create a navigational guide for understanding music and playing the guitar. Graphic images and visuals depict constellations and reveal patterns found inside the world of music. Guitar players improve their skills through knowledge and the application of music-theory principles.

This method is designed to encourage, support and celebrate an individual's creative journey and one's personal search for self-expression. Familiarity and understanding bolster confidence needed to experiment, write, compose and play "one's own" songs. Improvisation opens the imagination. It expresses emotions and feelings through creativity, words, minds and bodies, souls and spirits.

This guide is created by and for musicians. This method provides an overview of music and supports teaching and learning efforts at all levels. It is designed for players of any age, level of dexterity and depth of understanding. This tool supports the professionals, singers/songwriters, "creative" types, students, teachers, music therapists, patients, hobbyists and enthusiasts. It reaches as far as one's desires are pursued toward musical realization, expression and style.

This guide provides references and resources. It is designed to be reviewed periodically, especially with questions, or when seeking a new direction and inspiration. It can be viewed sequentially and/or by interest. Images represent concepts such as: notes, intervals and inversions, fingering patterns, scales, modes, chords and progressions. Music, science, art–all are intertwined, interrelated, relational and conform to the universal laws of physics and nature.

Music opens the imagination to creativity, inspiration and expression. This guide helps to navigate music, in a visual and usable way. It is designed to expand one's knowledge of the basics and fuel a growing love and affection for music. With enjoyment in mind, this method suggests and encourages growth through one's dedication and passion. Frequency of practice and play are essential for development, growth and success in one's evolution of music and playing skills.

This is a pathway from understanding one note to the harmonized C scale on the guitar, including: color coding, fingering charts and other visual tools.

Ben Ryan is a creative spirit, with concentration and focus on music, art, writing and guitar music. He is a technology innovator and inventor with families of U.S. patents. He is a resourceful, multi-disciplined, full-time student of life.

As a musician, he has played since he was seven, including piano, trumpet, voice and guitar.

In the early 1970s he spent nearly a year in New Orleans, experiencing the food, the life and the music scene there. He worked at WYES-TV as a production specialist. He was involved as a producer with a special-feature program highlighting the "Jazz and Heritage Festival." Soon thereafter, he lived in the West Village of New York City. He joined the staff of the world-famous: Cafe Wha?. He made the most of that time with all New York had to offer, friends, food and familiar places such as the coffee houses, art lofts and music studios.

Later on, he spent more than a decade as a pioneer in the burgeoning computer-generated graphics industry. From the very onset working with a General Electric Division, partnering with NASA on the simulated flight and animation program, exclusively for the Apollo Space Program, Mr. Ryan demonstrated and realized management and corporate leadership.

His work has been viewed globally, corporately and governmentally, including a major presentation to the Senate sub-committee on new communications technologies. He was an instrumental leader in the transition of Northrop Aircraft from conventional artwork techniques to the computer-generated methodologies, protocols and processes. Soon after, he started his own successful production company–creating custom graphic solutions and computer generated presentations–long before PowerPoint–in downtown Los Angeles, California with numerous Fortune 500 Companies as clients.

Most recently, he has been involved with the development of patented musical accessories. In addition, he spends his time on the development of new methods for understanding the "big picture": how music theory and the guitar fit together. His writing and Illustrations use visualizations and graphics to illustrate complex concepts simply.