git taken care of and a new mandolin to boot!

[wjierd]

thanks for the suggestions about fixing my broken headstock, i found that i am indeed taking a trip to aridzone to see my grandparents and my grandfather has become a luthier as his retirement project, so that taken care

but being without my gitfiddle did motivate me to go ahead and find az mandolin

just a cheap one, but i wont mind it getting banged up while i carry it with me everywhere and practice (and i do!)

any suggestions or good websites (that arent trying to sell me DVDs or videos) on learning various techniques?

ive been to mandolincafe and its not bad, but i know ive seen more stuff out there..

Thanks!
~Xia n

 

[dtb]

never went to any websites for instruction, so I can't help there. But my thought is to learn the major chords, where you can play'em without much trouble, and then listen to every bluegrass tune you can get hold of. Learn to get that percussive rhythm chop sound by damping the strings while hitting full chords. And when it comes to picking single notes, speed should be the last thing on your mind. Good clean notes each time should be the first order of buisness there. Learn all the scales in the first position first, and practice until you can do'em backwards and forwards, starting at any given point.

Listen to the greats, David Grisman, Sam Bush, Chris Thile, and of course, Mr. Monroe. Play along with the tunz, and as soon as you can say "pick it boys", you'll be picking away with the best of'em. It only took me 25 years. LOL.

I'm assuming you already got your mando. If the action is good, and it stays in tune (very important, because of the unisons) then you're on your way. If it gets good to you down the road, get a decent mando. I use a Michael Kelly, and our fiddle player has one also, and they're fine instruments for under 1000.00.

www.michaelkellyguitars.com

Have fun, hope this helps a little,

Dan

 

[crawdad]

Try:

http://www.co-mando.com/

lots of practice stuff for mandolin there.