In keeping with the theme of this conference, “TRIZ for New Beginnings,” it is time to kick TRIZ up a notch and expose its ideas to new disciplines. One discipline that can greatly benefit from TRIZ application is music. The possibilities for application are endless from music composition, to musical training, to idealizing musical performance.
Dr. Luke was able to idealize Theory of Constraints (TOC), Theory of Innovative Problem Solving (TRIZ) and Logic in his 2002 doctoral dissertation.
In this paper, Dr. Luke has applied his methodology to the process of creating a better chord book for musical instruments. Dr. Luke has successfully implemented these ideas and sold these chord books worldwide. With the current process in place, Dr. Luke can generate a new chord book for any fretted instrument tuned to a chromatic scale in any tuning within a matter of minutes. Not only does this provide a niche need, but it also is easily marketable because the books are generated in pdf form and do not have to be printed in large quantities.
Future applications already in development are automatically generated scale books, chord books for non-fretted instruments, and chord books for diatonically tuned instruments. Dr Luke is also in the process of developing a similar product for songbooks.
Dr. Stephen Luke is a professional engineer residing in Chesapeake, VA with his wife, the former Amy Stewart, and two sons, James and Malachi. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute (1983), a Master’s Degree in Engineering Management from Old Dominion University (1993), and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Old Dominion University (2002). Steve has authored over twenty technical papers, mostly in the field of Reliability Engineering, and has written over 100 books in the area of Chord theory for musical instruments. Steve has worked for the US Government, CACI and (currently) for AMSEC LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding where he serves as a logistics engineer. Steve plays over 20 instruments and experiments with them all the time.
