Picking 1

Having more time and inclination just at the moment, I'm blogging in more frequently about my progress. This is just for now as I need to spend time on the fretboard rather than the keyboard.

I've accumulated a whole shelf of Bluegrass and other mandolin books but have never really put them to proper use. I've preferred to jump into learning songs with a minimum of easy chords to support them. If I'd known at the beginning what I know now I could have accelerated this process, but although I've fumbled about, I'm convinced that the path I took was basically the right one for me. It had me performing songs and playing along with others in a social environment, and that gave me the incentive to keep going as well as providing real-life experience.

And I don't regret spending the time accumulating about 40 songs (rather than developing technique). If you expect to perform an average of three songs once a week, I feel you need that sort of repertoire to avoid too much repetition. Having said that, it's now time to slow down on mere accumulation for reasons of both maintenance and development.

Anyway, when it comes to picking, it looks like I'm going to have to give up my preference for instant gratification in favour of spending time in isolation working systematically through exercises. This is totally contrary to my basic personality and a huge and taxing hardship. Just saying.

I am starting with Bradley Laird's Mandolin Master Class from his Complete Learning System. I had seen Brad's videos on YouTube and was hugely impressed with their clarity. The book is strong on conveying concepts and reflects his pool of accumulated wisdom. My beginning point is playing scales with a metronome. I hate scales, I hate metronomes, and I'm easily bored, but I just have to bite the bullet. If I get too bored I will rehearse some songs in between. At this stage I'm playing scales very slowly indeed. The idea is to get the action and timing perfect so you can eventually play fast (but accurately). It rather reminds me of doing Tai Chi.

Lead Mandolin

Besides chop chords, the other major aspect of Bluegrass mandolin playing are the twiddly bits. While I need to improve my chopping, learning to play lead mandolin is now my major challenge,  and I'm aiming to make some discernible progress by next May.

The fundamental of playing lead mandolin is Alternate Picking as explained in this YouTube video by Don Julin:



There are two main aspects to this. The first is to hit the onbeat notes on a downstroke and the offbeat notes on an upstroke. So far so good. The second is to keep the right-hand moving in a regular rhythm regardless of what notes are played (or not played).

I've never really played melody on a stringed instrument before and at this early stage I'm finding it extremely difficult. However, I now have a week with more time than I usually have, so I'll see how far I get.

Further chopping progress

The last few months have been a period of unprecedented musical chaos and I am still struggling to get back to where I was before the changeover to chopping.

The biggest challenge has been playing the 7523 G3 shape without fouling neighbouring strings, but I finally made a bit of a breakthrough by improving my left-hand position. Thanks to Dennis Caplinger's Bluegrass Mandolin Basics & Beyond DVD I now have my left-hand square-on to the mando's neck with the thumb opposite the first finger and the back of the neck 'not' buried into the purlicue. This 'correct' position seems counter-intuitive for stretching but it works, and I can now use this shape in first position (i.e. as a G chord) as well as higher up the neck.

Apart from a small number of mainly modal/minor songs (which I'll probably keep in a style suitable for Old Time ), I've now sorted out what chord shapes to use, and it's basically a question of getting used to them, i.e. the new shapes, changing between them, making the necessary stretches, and, above all, making them cleanly without fouling.

I've also been experimenting with the even heavier tortoiseshell-style Golden Gate and Dawg picks. They give a nice 'chunky' effect and I shall be using these in the future.