The Arrangement Method

How I build cinematic fingerstyle arrangements — tunings, chord schemes, and note choices.

Everything I’ve published on Intellimusica comes out of two chord schemes, a couple of scales, and two or three tunings. That’s it. That’s the whole toolkit.

I’ll be upfront: what I actually do at the guitar is 99% ear. I’ve played for 35 years and taught for 30, and when I hear something I know where to go on the fretboard almost immediately. But the ear isn’t magic and it isn’t talent — it’s thirty years of running the same small set of ideas over and over until they became instinct. The ideas are what I can hand you.

“The Arrangement Method” is my attempt to reverse engineer that. Not a theory course. The specific chord schemes I reach for, when I switch to an alternate tuning, and which notes stay and which ones go. You’ll understand the TABs on this site differently. And you’ll have what you need to start arranging your own.

A note on where this course stands: my main chord scheme, The C Position, is complete and all of it is here. The G Position — my secondary scheme —…