While in college working on my music degree, I found myself continually frustrated. I wanted so badly to be able to learn songs and other pieces of music faster, but no matter how hard I tried, I found myself learning slowly. Trumpet majors, piano majors, sax majors all around me could look at sheet music and read it down, not perfectly, but well enough to get the gist of a song. And I could too, as long as the notes didn’t move out of the first position. None of the books available at the time taught how to read beyond that position. So I had to laboriously figure it out each time I was assigned a new tune.

So one day, while at home, deep in practice, I had an idea. I took an old Alfred’s Guitar Method Book and plunked it down on my music stand. Then I forced myself to figure out how to read the notes they were teaching in open position but in fifth position instead. It took a little getting used to, but I did it! However, I came across the problem that there were no songs in the book that allowed me to practice reading the first string, since the book only covered first position. So I sat down and wrote out several pages of practice songs just so I could learn the notes A, B, and C in fifth position. Time passed, and I eventually did the same thing with ninth position. By the time I graduated, I was able to read notes anywhere on the neck! But I couldn’t figure out why there wasn’t a book or series of books out there that helped make this easier to do.

As more time passed, I forgot about the idea. After graduation, I started teaching guitar regularly, and eventually, my students wanted to learn more of the neck as I had. So I pulled out the songs I had written for myself along with traditional method books to help them learn the neck. But those books weren’t designed for that, so even though my students could read up the neck, they weren’t as good at it as they could be.

A master’s degree in education later, I finally sat down to write what would become the first Missing Method Guitar book. This book started in fifth position and gave my students a way to practice it well. It worked. I was happy. My students were happy!

Since Amy and I had already seen some success with our fiction titles, we decided to put The Missing Method for sale online as well. And without any advertising, it began to sell regularly.

All the while, I not only continued teaching guitar lessons, but Amy and I both taught college writing. Then, in 2016, after teaching at the college level for over 10 years, we decided to focus on publishing, and in March, our publishing company, Tenterhook Books, LLC., was born.

Now, 20+ Missing Method books later, we have long lists of projects we can't wait to get to, and many happy students keeping us motivated to keep creating more.

We are happy to have you join us. Please let us know if there's anything we can do to help you on musical journey.

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