What is The Fifth Fret?

The Fifth Fret is where I publish occasional writing on learning to play guitar — perhaps with detours into coding, history, or politics. I think of it as a workshop more than a blog, though some of what appears here may interest others.

Who is behind it?

I’m Monty Hindman, an amateur guitarist with a background in history, the social sciences, and software engineering. I’ve played guitar for about five decades, casually and intermittently for the first four, but with greater seriousness and a focus on acoustic fingerstyle during the most recent. I post new recordings on YouTube roughly once a month.

I studied history and English at the University of Oregon and earned a Ph.D. in U.S. political and economic history from the University of Michigan. My dissertation — The Rise and Fall of Wealth Taxation — examines the history of fiscal politics and policy in the American states, focusing on the period 1830-1940, during which state governments created a fiscal regime based on the general property tax and then replaced it with modern tax instruments like income taxes and especially general sales taxes — shifting the burden from wealth to mass taxation.

Professionally, I’ve worked at the intersection of the historical social sciences, data, and software engineering:

Contact

I can be reached via GitHub, YouTube, or by email via the provider associated with YouTube (first and last name, as one word with no punctuation).