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.
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