In 1997, on his 13th birthday, Christopher Dean's father stopped by after work to drop off a gift. When Christopher opened the box standing in his driveway, he was blinded by the way it shimmered in the streetlights. A deep blue Ibanez RX40 — white pickguard, two single coils, a humbucker, 5-way toggle switch, whammy bar. He knew none of that at the time. To him, it just looked awesome.
The headstock had a crack in the tip. His father said, "If you take this seriously, we'll replace the neck and upgrade your guitar as you go." The fact that it was a $79 damaged display model didn't matter. Before Christopher learned his first chord, he removed every string, every screw, the neck, the pickguard, the output jack — took it apart in every way possible without disconnecting the solder points, then put it back together again.
No matter its flaws, to me it was the most beautiful guitar on the planet because it was MINE, and I wanted to know everything about it. Regardless of the 30 years of wear, to me, it still shines the same way as it did all the way back when.
— Christopher Dean
A few days later, his uncles fashioned a cable from twisted speaker wire sealed with duct tape — a quarter-inch to eighth-inch adapter — and Christopher plugged his guitar into the microphone input of his boombox. "I felt like right then and there I could see my entire career as a musician flash before my eyes."
He immediately understood that all the sounds he heard from his local rock stations were within his reach while that guitar was in his hand.
Three decades of studying — theory, technique, customizations, stage production, tour management — led Christopher to a realization: most music theory resources were written in a secret language. Diagrams that looked like trigonometry class. Terms that felt like a "Musicians Code" accessible only to those with expensive instructors.
So he did what he'd always done with that Ibanez — he took it apart.
This isn't meant to be a book about "Everything Music Theory." This course is more akin to Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do. He studied multiple techniques from several cultures and combined them to make a more effective fighting style. That's what the 5 Missing Notes™ is doing for guitar players. Your New Playbook of Music Theory on the Fretboard.
— Christopher Dean
The breakthrough came from teaching two students simultaneously — one on blues/pentatonic, one on diatonic modes. Noticing the structural relationship between the two systems, Christopher drew out the seven diatonic modes in three-note-per-string shapes, then mapped where the blues "blue note" fell in each pattern. Then he asked: "What are the other four missing notes, and when can I play them?"
With a ruler, graph paper, and a pack of highlighters, he mapped all five chromatic notes against all seven diatonic modes, named them by their emotional character, and built the color-coded system that became the 5 Missing Notes™.
Christopher has toured internationally as a bassist and guitarist, worked as a guitar tech for legacy acts, and currently plays bass with Tommy Victor (guitarist of Danzig) in the veteran band Prong — a band that released their first records when Christopher was two years old. The Book of Dean's 33 rules were written from those tours, those stages, those green rooms, and those impossible load-ins.
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