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Coohoolin posted:I've switched my teaching over to skype and other video call stuff, if anyone wants to go over a couple of things with me hit me up! No charge, goon solidarity, tipping is an option. Awesome thanks buddy. This project will involve scads of new chords so for fast changes I may hit you up for suggestions on different shapes
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Mar 19, 2020 17:33
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Bilirubin posted:Awesome thanks buddy. This project will involve scads of new chords so for fast changes I may hit you up for suggestions on different shapes Sweet, anyone interested can hit me up here on email or Facebook. Elias.eiholzer@gmail.com or https://www.facebook.com/elijah.fynmore.
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Mar 20, 2020 15:26
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Good resources on learning how to play Canadian, Irish, Scottish or Scandinavian folk music? Not looking for something specific necessarily to one instrument but mostly on structure, harmony, etc to get a good idea of how to go further with the small tunes you can find everywhere. Thanks! I won't be playing it on the madolin but I was suggested posting in this thread instead for help.
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Jul 8, 2020 07:57
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I've worked through the Murphy Method videos and found them great to get a foothold on the mandolin. They aren't for high falootin' music learning but focus on simple tunes and playing by ear only, no sheet or tab. It's helped me a lot to be ready to jam with others.
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Aug 13, 2020 21:16
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Sup mandogoons? So I’ve got this Washburn I’ve been tooling around on for a bit, still pretty green but I’m having a great time teaching myself. But I’d like to get some lessons. Maybe a longshot since there’s not a whole lot of people in this thread it seems, and y’all seem way beyond my skill level, but by chance have any of you tried out ArtistWorks? Saw Mike Marshall gives lessons there and he’s awesome. I was thinking of giving it a go since in-person lessons aren’t an option for me atm.
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Feb 9, 2021 03:39
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If you are just looking for some online resources, MandoLessons is a wonderful free resource. If it's the Mike Marshall thing in particular you are interested in, I looked into it a fair bit when I was last on a serious mando kick and most places I read up on it made his course sound like the real deal. People on the mandolin forums spoke well of it. I ended up going with in-person lessons instead, to give you an idea of how long ago this was.
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Feb 9, 2021 05:33
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MandoLessons is all right, definitely checked it out. But I was wanting some actual dialog and review, which Mike offers through ArtistWorks via video exchange. There’s intricacies of technique I want to make sure I’m getting right while I’m still green, you know? Thanks for the reply. I’ll go for it. He’s a fantastic player and seems like a nice dude. I think it’ll be worth it.
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Feb 10, 2021 21:33
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New (kinda) player checking in. I'm a Suzuki kid who played violin (decently) through college, and have been playing guitar (poorly) since high school. Having hit a comfortable middle age, I recently picked up a beginner mandolin (a Loar) because I'm increasingly interested in the types of music they feature heavily in. It turns out that my past made me pick up playing guitar on a violin pretty easily, although I'm still taking the threads recommendations on lessons (online and virtual). Right now my biggest question is about sheet music. Thanks to violin, I can sight read for mandolin, which I could never do for guitar, and looking around at some sheet music online has left me unimpressed. There's a lot of stuff out there that looks like a lazy/automated system made up a part (in one example, scribing multiple mandolins for Going to California) and not at all music for the actual part. A lot of it just seems to be generic accompaniment, like its the right hand of the piano. Is this just because of online music farms putting out whatever PDFs they can sell? If I get some Mel Bay books will they have a higher chance of being good? I'd love to go to the music store and poke through them, but plague and all.
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Apr 23, 2021 03:31
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stealie72 posted:New (kinda) player checking in. They Mel Bay books are generally well regarded. But funny enough, Mike Marshall has had me grabbing some violin music to play on the mandolin! Listen to some of the classical pieces he and Chris Thile play together or separately Been away from my mandolin for a while thinking its time to start building the calluses up again. What I really need though is focus and motivation to learn some damned songs!
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Apr 27, 2021 05:38
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Another Bill posted:I've worked through the Murphy Method videos and found them great to get a foothold on the mandolin. They aren't for high falootin' music learning but focus on simple tunes and playing by ear only, no sheet or tab. It's helped me a lot to be ready to jam with others. I'm glad to see some independent verification that this approach works. I really need to work on my ear playing. I know Red Henry from other online places and of course he's very high on the approach but he's somewhat invested
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Apr 27, 2021 05:39
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I picked up the Mel Bay classical book on a whim on sale one day and it's been amazing. https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Man...19530727&sr=8-5 I drift in and out of mandolin, because I just don't vibe very hard on bluegrass any more, but there are a lot of different places to take the instrument if you're curious. Also, you can poke around Mandolin Cafe's classical/italian forum. There are people there who've made a life's work of tracking down and scanning turn-of-the-century popular mando/guitar scores. There's usually a dropbox link floating around with more music in it than you could work through in a lifetime.
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Apr 27, 2021 14:44
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Bilirubin posted:Mel Bay books are generally well regarded. Bilirubin posted:They Mel Bay books are generally well regarded. But funny enough, Mike Marshall has had me grabbing some violin music to play on the mandolin! Caught in a weird paradox currently: Already wish I had spent more and gotten something better than the Loar, but there's no way in hell I would have known that or realized that I'm liking this enough to sell off some other hobby stuff to get a better mandolin if I hadn't bought the Loar.
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Apr 30, 2021 04:00
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Speaking of violin and mando, I haven't been much happier than I was sitting in a music store playing around with the mandolins when a mom and daughter came in to ask if they happened to have the violin sheet music for Ashokan Farewell. The staffmember was saying he wasn't familiar with it as I started to pluck it out quietly in the background and she suddenly stops, turns and shouts "that's it!" Ah, that's a nice memory. Now that I think about it, that was the first time I performed for anyone who wasn't my wife. Squiggle fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Apr 30, 2021 |
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Apr 30, 2021 17:31
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Gonna go back and read the whole thread but just saying I'm really excited to have picked up a mando after wanting one for like 20 years! I played a ton of bass in my youth but have always been enamored with this instrument. Found a local Kentucky KM-150 and picked it up yesterday.   I do need some help with the strap button - should this be a peg or a screw in type like this Looks smooth and tapered, no threading I can see. 
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May 16, 2021 18:40
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So I know the go-to take is going to be lessons and review buuuuut…. From back when I posted, I ended up diving in. And maybe I just over-practiced, but I got some really bad RSI, tendon that runs down from the thumb on my fretting hand. Commonplace wisdom is if it hurts, stop, so I did. Now I want to pick it back up, so do you guys have any general advice for avoiding RSI? Like common pitfalls and so on?
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May 16, 2021 19:06
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Bud posted:Gonna go back and read the whole thread but just saying I'm really excited to have picked up a mando after wanting one for like 20 years! My 150 is a peg. I can pull it out and take a pic when I get home if it would be helpful.
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May 16, 2021 19:12
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Huxley posted:My 150 is a peg. I can pull it out and take a pic when I get home if it would be helpful. Thanks, figured it was a peg. My daughter's acoustic has one but its actually a bit too small. No pic needed but if you have a means to measure that would be great - if not no worries. If anyone has a source please let me know. Edit - trying the unit from Waverly. I'm sure I can modify that if needed. Bud fucked around with this message at 21:57 on May 16, 2021 |
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May 16, 2021 19:51
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One inch long, about 3/8 diameter at the spot where it should be catching. Color matches the bridge. Good luck finding it and enjoy it, I adore mine.
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May 17, 2021 11:58
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The bluegrass jam is starting up again. I play a variety of instruments in the genre, and am probably least proficient at the mandolin, although I'd consider myself an intermediate. I tend to take multiple instruments to the jam and play whatever's needed to round out the ensemble, or play whatever instrument I'm most comfortable with on the song. I want to up my game a bit on typical bluegrass mandolin, so am looking for a book of chords, licks, and tab. I could sign up for Artist Works or Banjo Ben or some other site, and that's fine, but I really just want a book. I work on a computer all day and get sick of sitting in this chair. As there are a few standard texts for bluegrass banjo (such as "The Earl Book" and say, Tony Trishka's text on melodic banjo styles), is there something similar for mandolin? Not really a huge bible of sorts, but a standard book to star with? I can play OK, but just really want to not have to figure out licks and such and save time by propping a book up on the stand and working through some fiddle tune tabs, say. I really need the Nils Hokkanen pocket guide but it's out of print  I see a bunch of stuff on this page at Elderly, https://www.elderly.com/collections/category_books-downloads?page=4 but not sure where to start, there's a lot there Edit: The Mandolin Picker's guide to bluegrass improvisation may be a good start for me Planet X fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Jun 13, 2021 |
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Jun 13, 2021 01:38
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Necro/cross posting from the guitar thread: More music! I threatened you all with pre-bluegrass mandolin, and here we are. I got my SM57 clone and wanted to record something on it, so I pulled out the easiest thing I could find. A man named Stellario Cambria wrote an actual boatload of mandolin orchestra music around the beginning of the jazz age, when the mandolin was still very much an Italian, eating pizza on a gondola in a movie, kind of thing. By all accounts Stellario traveled around the NY region publishing and teaching, popping up in news articles here and there.  Our little friend here is learning Bacio D'Angelo (Angel's Kiss), which is what I've also played. So if you're wondering about the relative difficulty of this, 8-year-old Anna figured it out 100 years ago. So make a pizza, pour a glass of wine, and waltz with your sweetie. Steal a kiss and thank Mr Stellario Cambria. https://soundcloud.com/matt-p-647926275/bacio-dangelo (Also, you may thank me for not playing the repeats.)
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Aug 17, 2021 20:38
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Got myself a nice Couch strap for my F, but what's the best way to tie it around the scroll without it looking so janky? I know nothing about knots.
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Oct 9, 2021 14:41
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zenguitarman posted:Got myself a nice Couch strap for my F, but what's the best way to tie it around the scroll without it looking so janky? I know nothing about knots. Stapler. (I have been wondering this exact question for years and never got it to not look terrible. I see other people walking around with awesome-looking straps, so I know it's possible, but whenever I try to do it, it looks like a small child failed to tie their shoes.) (Also regretting that joke immediately. Please no one ever put their instrument in the same room as a stapler even.)
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Oct 16, 2021 01:43
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BurningBeard posted:Sup mandogoons? I did the artist works course with Mike (and a couple with caterina) and it was excellent for me. Still have an active subscription, just haven't had the time to get back into it. If you sign up, look for some of his responses to my videos, I made him go deep on some technical stuff lol.
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Dec 10, 2021 13:40
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stealie72 posted:New (kinda) player checking in. Another great and free resource is thesession.org, everything there has been written out and uploaded by website users (overwhelmingly irish or scottish trad musicians). Also a reminder that I believe there is a link in the OP to my intro post to trad 101 somewhere in the thread.
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Dec 10, 2021 13:44
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I'm an awful newbie and I suck, can I post stuff I'm working on for feedback, or is that spammy and annoying?
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Dec 17, 2021 22:26
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Xiahou Dun posted:I'm an awful newbie and I suck, can I post stuff I'm working on for feedback, or is that spammy and annoying? Go ahead! I'm a teacher, I'll be happy to give some feedback.
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Jan 17, 2022 04:31
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Thanks a mill! I made a soundcloud cause I don't have another way to share audio files : warning, this is only the finest in crappy phone recordings. https://tinyurl.com/3kxj67kp I semi-purposely didn't pick super clean recordings because the point is to get criticism and save-scumming to make myself look better doesn't help that. So these are pretty representative of what it's like if I just pick up and play, although I'm mostly warmed up already for these, meaning it's got some overt gently caress-ups I'm aware of like a finger going rogue and playing the wrong note or me brain-farting and adding a pause. It's three different tunes so I can give a good sample : King of the Fairies is one of my go-to warm-up tunes that I've played at least a thousand times, Methodist Preacher I just learned a couple of weeks ago and can sort of mostly do except a bit slow and crap*, and Midnight on the Water is a tune I'm actually sort-of kind of working on to make presentable one day cause I think it's pretty. (Not sure about that slide in the A part though, I don't know if it really adds anything.) Background in case it's relevant : Pretty much entirely self-taught, with no prior experience at all. About 10 years ago I was dating a fiddle player, she handed me a mandolin and informed me I was a mandolin player now. So I learned like 3 tunes very, very badly and some super basic scales and that's all I had and I was absolutely terrible, it was just a thing I'd do rarely when I'd been drinking. This year I got laid up with an injury and got tired of reading so I kind of went a bit crazy and started practicing for real, like, a lot. Starting in around October I restrung the bastard, went back to square 0 and have been practicing at least 2-3 hours a day, every day : now I'm 2-3 hours most weekdays, with a break every week or three just to give my hand a rest, but on weekends I do an 8 hour technique Saturday and a 6 hour tune-learning Sunday. My sister's a really good musician and I ask her theory questions and general put-finger on string advice (she's a guitar and violin player, among others), but she has nothing to add on like pick direction or anything. I've been eating through David Benedict and Mandolessons on youtube, and mostly I just keep grabbing new tunes that are fun and challenging and sound good enough I won't go crazy while practicing. I only know two-finger chords so far, but I'm trying to get my hands around four-finger chords, they're just too much of a stretch for me to reliably change between at speed yet. Bluegrass chopping is something I abstractly understand, but my hand can't even attempt. Tremolos are a thing, but mine sound less like a sustain and more like I'm just having a very tiny seizure in my right hand. I'd love to get actual lessons, absolutely champing at the bit, but I'm a grad student with a staggering amount of medical expenses to pay for right now, so my bank account is basically a cartoon moth selling its antennae for a bottle of night train. So yeah, any advice you can give is appreciated. I understand how crap I sound still so I don't mind getting torn apart if it helps me get better long term. Thanks again. *Okay and also I just straight up can't do the pick-up note double-stop slide yet. Or not at speed at least. I'm working on getting my hand to do it, and I can if I have time to prep, but not quick enough to do in the song so I'm just sliding from A to B on the E string.
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Jan 17, 2022 18:58
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You sound great! It's awesome to put yourself out here for everyone to hear. I'm no teacher or expert, but one thing that kind of jumped out at me, because it's a thing I've had to really work on (as a bedroom solo player, too): If you can find a metronome that you can change the meter on, so it makes a different click on 1, that's very handy. I hear a few times in your songs (and believe me it's an easy habit to fall into when you do most of your playing alone) you can rush through your holds into the next measure. Like, some of those dotted quarters in King of the Fairies sound like come out fast. And when you aren't playing with other people, you don't even notice. It also helps to count those measures out loud to yourself. "1& 2& 3 4&" On my phone, the Soundbrenner app has a metronome that lets you change the pitch of each click, and it's very handy. I think it's still free. Great stuff, keep going! Your tone is really nice.
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Jan 17, 2022 19:31
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O yeah. I should have mentioned. I have a metronome but absolutely no idea how to use it. So I just practice next to a clicking noise that I guess I keep up with? I understand time signatures, and I know I need to match the beat, and I can do that by like tapping/clapping along, but if I try to anything besides straight quarter notes in 4/4 I just whizz off and make up my own time that I keep with myself because thanks brain, good decision you didn’t consult me on. I’m trying to bash myself into getting better by doing weirder timings as like a sink or swim, so it’s all jigs and waltzes and polkas on my to-learn list, plus whatever the hell you call the slipjig wearing a waltz costume that’s Lonesome Moonlight Waltz. PS thank you! PPS while I necroed the thread, this version of Red Prairie Dawn is kind of novel but I like it a lot, especially the tempo transition. Working on learning the B part. https://youtu.be/EHV-FDnBMFY
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Jan 17, 2022 20:51
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Tempo is how many bpm you are playing at. BPM is "beats per minute" which is exactly what it sounds like. 60 bpm is exactly one click per second. 120 bpm is a click every half second. Pretty much universally, the best advice you get is "play a lot with a metronome." If you ask experienced folks what they wish they knew when they started, it was "start playing earlier with a metronome." Your King of the Fairies is at around 80 bpm, so you would set the metronome (you can even just google metronome to get one) to 80 and play your song, really working hard to match up with the clicks. You can get a feel for it by doing exactly what you said, play quarter notes. Don't even play a scale or a song, just downpick GGGG DDDD AAAA EEEE AAAA DDDD GGGG back and forth over and over. Focus on keeping time in your right hand, don't do anything in the left but support your instrument. Then step up to cross picking eighth notes. GgGgGgGg DdDdDdDd etc. Try to play them straight, then swing them a bit, just get the feel. Then try your song. If you know what a triplet is (three notes over one or two beats), think of 6/8 and 9/8 as feeling like triplets in 2/4 or in 3/4. picture the dancers' feet landing on the upbeat. So 6/8 comes out feeling like BAH dah dah Bah dah dah and 9/8 is Bah dah dah Bah dah dah Bah dah dah. If you go back and listen to some of them with this in mind, it makes a lot more sense. Sorry if I explain stuff you already know!
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Jan 17, 2022 21:05
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I know it abstractly and I’m working it, but getting that to jive with the rest of playing is being a process. I used to be pretty into folk dancing, so I know the time signatures by feel and can keep the beat with them*. I’m trying to match that feel with pick direction in some kind of weird hand dancing thing that makes internal sense but is really hard to describe. Not disagreeing or defending myself or something. I really appreciate any help and I’m just trying to explain where I’m coming from. *Reels, hornpipes, waltzes, polkas, jigs, double jigs and slip-jigs. Strathspeys are “that weird thing some Scottish stuff does”. I fear the day when I bump into 7/13 or some weirdness.
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Jan 17, 2022 22:38
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First off, if you were able to upload some videos, that would be a big help in identifying some improvement areas for technique. Tone is good, so I think technical focus would be directed at things like fluidity, speed, and left hand intricacy. Apologies if any of this is obvious/stuff you already know! For general improvement, the basics are scale runs, scale patterns, and right hand string changing exercises. David Benedict is a good shout, his video on right hand exercises is pretty comprehensive and will serve you well. For the right hand, you have two main time signature categories- common and compound. Common is anything that is divisible by 2, so anything in 4/4 (reels, hornpipes), 2/4 (polkas), or 3/4 (waltzes). Common time stuff is always played with a strict Down Up Down Up pattern. Compound is divisible by 3, so jigs (3/8 or 6/8), slipjigs (9/8), slides (12/8). Picking pattern for compound time is strict DUD DUD DUD etc. so you can really feel that pulse on the first beat of each group of 3. For odd time signatures, like 7/8 (7/13 doesn't exist as there is no "13th note"- time signatures tell you [how many]/[what kind], so 4/4 means each bar has four quarter notes, 6/8 means each bar has six eighth notes, etc), you end up simply breaking up the bar into a combination of common and compound. Most 7/8 tunes I've seen, for example, end up being like 1-2 1-2 1-2-3 per bar, so you have a common time bit of 4 notes that you pick DUDU and then a group of 3 in compound at the end, so DUD. A bar of 7/8 would then be picked DUDUDUD-DUDUDUD etc. The new Punch Brothers album cover of Hell On Church Street Blues starts off with the track in 5/8 (on the music video you can hear Thile counting in) and you can hear how the pulse goes 1-2-1-2-3, which you would pick as DU-DUDetc. I spent an insane amount of time working on my right hand- I moved over from guitar and it's such a different feeling that you really need to deconstruct guitar playing and relearn mandolin picking, which is maybe why your guitar playing sister doesn't have much to say about picking techniques. Some key things I picked up during my right hand deconstruction and reconstruction are: - Keep a loose grip, almost so loose you're worried you'll drop the pick - The motion must ABSOLUTELY come from the wrist- not the thumb and index, not the forearm, but the wrist. This might take some time to click with, I just sat and played DUDU on open strings for ages while staring at my wrist and trying to zen my way into feeling the movement. Eventually it clicks. - A slight downwards angle with the pick can greatly affect your tone and precision in a positive way by minimising the amount of material the pick has to touch the strings with. - Experiment with different amounts of the pick poking out from your thumb. Many people will advise that if you swallow up a bit more of the pick under the thumb, and leave less of the tip exposed, you have greater control over your flow and groove. - Practicing slow to get fast is important, but so is practicing fast to get better at fast. Just try it sometimes, go and play something as fast as you possibly can and try to notice where you feel tension or tightening up in the arm. You'd never get better at running faster if all you ever practiced was jogging or walking. - When you do feel a tightness coming on somewhere in the arm (my danger zone was always the shoulder), relax it by tensing up the muscles in the affected area as much as possible and then releasing them. I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting right now but that's the main ones that helped me click things into place. My practice routine is scale patterns starting with G to settle in and then going through D, A, and E, and then doing scale patterns of those same (sequences of 3, sequences of 4, and skipping the 2nd). Then I play my specific "practice tunes", big ole hard fuckers that make me work out a bunch of different stuff. At the moment for me these are Jessamyn's Reel and Bittersweet Reel by Chris Thile, the Mystery Inch by Damien O'Kane, and Curious Beetle by Keremy Kittel. Then I take a song I know very well and try to adapt it or do variations or add some harmony or something. For chords, I'm afraid there's nothing else for it- just gotta keep practicing. The shape for the 4 finger chop chord seems daunting but just try to keep your wrist relaxed and straight and sort of wriggle around until you can feel changes in comfort. They're easier than they look and you might find that it just clicks into place one day and you go from hating them to finding them real easy. Strumming is all about getting out of your head and finding the intuitive rhythm flow in your right hand. I use a very different grip for strumming than I do for playing lead, I splay my middle, ring, and pinky fingers out for balance. Other people keep the same closed grip they do for lead. Try some things out and see what feels comfortable. Start with basic Bum Ditty rhythms (D skip D U / D skip D U / D skip D U / etc) and work your way up, always focusing on keeping those down strokes on the 1 and 3. If you keep changing the swing of your arm, as some people will try, you lose rhythm and the syncopation stops working. Hope that's helpful!
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Jan 23, 2022 19:07
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Thanks so much! I can try to take a video, I just gotta figure out a set-up since as is my "recording" is just playing into my phone. Which is fine for my purposes of just listening back to what I played to get an idea of what it sounds like when I'm not busy playing, but obviously has some distinct downsides in terms of sharing. As to your advice, it's all stuff I "know", but I think I still need to hear it and do it another god knows how many times for it to stick. For example, I mostly know the theory behind alternating down-up picking, and I do a bunch of exercises and practice it a bunch, but I'm not doing it 100% successfully all the time. Like, I'm getting better, it's making more sense, and I do it always... Until I start playing faster or I'm not paying attention or something hinky happens and I'm half-way through a jig and hosed up so now I'm trying to fix it while keeping time and ahhhhhhhhhhh. The biggest thing I want to check is I actually don't do proper exercises as much as I probably should? I do scales and picking practice and stuff, obviously, but for the most part after I'm kind of warmed up, I tend to do specific tunes that make me do certain techniques instead. I'm assuming this is a personal problem, but just playing literally scales for more than like 10 minutes is something I'm terrible at, but playing a tune that makes me do most of a scale or involves a lot of cross-picking, I can do that for a couple hours and not bat an eye. There's something about having it in the context of a tune that makes me put more effort in that I think is helpful, but what do I know I might be knee-capping myself. How bad is that in terms of habits? Another thing is that cause I'm primarily interested in folk music (bluegrass, old-time, Irish, French-Canadian), there is a serious tilt in what kinds of keys I'm familiar with. D, G and A are pretty much the only major keys I mess with, A and E minor are in there, and then there's a whole lot of weird modal stuff that I play a bunch of tunes in but don't really know how they work. I feel really bad for any of the frets for F natural cause that really is like 9 on a microwave for me ; I know tunes that use it, but they're a distinct minority. I guess I'm basically just wondering how I'm doing in terms of progress? Trying to confirm I'm not practicing in an overtly wrong way, and I'm happy to just keep noodling around on my own. It's kind of just a personal hobby, it's not like I have any plans to do anything with this besides "have fun" and "maybe don't embarrass myself if I ever go to a session". Definitely need to get a new mando though as soon as my finances stop being so breath-takingly awful. I'm on a cheapo little Loar and I'm definitely feeling the need to upgrade soon. In the meantime, I got patches for my case finally so I'll post pics when those come in. Thanks again! Probably gonna post more stupid questions cause this instrument is my main non-work activity.
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Jan 24, 2022 01:15
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Progress wise... Your tone sounds better than your speed and accuracy. Like some of those slide gently caress ups and stuff I'd expect to come from someone who hasn't developed that good a level of tone yet, so I can't quite tell (hence the request for videos). As long as you practice regularly, make sure you do enough right hand exercises, and keep it relaxed you'll get faster and more confident. I know songs are more fun than exercises but yeah especially for your right hand I'm afraid they're essential. Few minutes every day, you'll see results soon. And try going faster than you think you can every now and then. You could also try playing stuff that's way too hard for you, try to force your way through bit by bit. I did a lot of this when I was starting with Bach violin sonatas and partitas, or the cello suites arranged for violin. Was awful and poo poo and slow at first but then a year later I knew a bunch of them by heart!
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Jan 25, 2022 01:15
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I started taking the Sharon Gilchrist lessons online. Theyre great.
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Jan 25, 2022 02:29
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^^^^The mando thread lives!~ Let me know how it is! Coohoolin posted:Progress wise... Your tone sounds better than your speed and accuracy. Like some of those slide gently caress ups and stuff I'd expect to come from someone who hasn't developed that good a level of tone yet, so I can't quite tell (hence the request for videos). The tone is obviously the out-lier here then. I just assumed that you and Huxley were being polite and "good tone" was like telling someone their novel was "interesting" or something. It's probably just beginner's luck cause I have the exact same knowledge base for that and everything else. But I should have the chance to take a video tomorrow ; it's slightly weird cause of my living situation and stuff, but tomorrow I'll actually be alone in the house for a bit and can just do whatever. I'm pretty sure I knew that exercises must be the correct choice and I'm just being a whiny baby who likes tunes better than cross-picking practice or whatever. This is probably why there are exercises and not just everyone does tunes. The first tune I tried to learn was Ode to a Butterfly so trust me, I do tunes that are massively too hard/too fast for me constantly. (Don't try and play Thile right out the gate ; I lcut myself with the opening slide, no poo poo.) It's a big part of my practice cycle to just push myself really hard at intervals. I'm currently just sitting and playing Newmarket Polka as fast as I can or chipping away at First Corinthians 1:18 and Squirrel Hunters (I tried Brilliancy and lol, just lol, the hubris), as the last part of real practice. I do tune-up => exercises => baby little tunes => [meat of actually working on specifics techniques, learning new tunes, continuing works in progress] => go ham and play as fast as I can as hard as I can until I'm so tired I'm functionally useless => nice slow tunes (e.g. Bury Me Beneath the Willow) so I don't spend the rest of the day all hand-crampy. Last question, y'all got monster calluses on your left hand, right? Like, when I started years ago I had calluses, but I've always had calluses on my hands, I worked construction and grew up chopping wood. But the last couple of months I basically grew little blocks of wood on the ends of the fingers of my left hand. They make an audibly different clicking sound when I tap my fingers, I can't use touch screens very well with that hand and wood-splinters* just like bounce off now. That's normal, right? Right? Rubbing doubled steel strings a couple hours a day, it makes sense, I get it, but these are some monsters. Anyway, sorry for long posts. I'm just really excited. Thanks again! *From messing with firewood, no my mando's not splintering.
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Jan 25, 2022 03:31
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As promised, here is a very, very crappy video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGFN2DoSBxA Done at a kitchen table cause that's seriously the best I can do. Sorry, profoundly not set up to record like that. Plus I'm super anxious so I gently caress up a lot (more than usual) just cause I'm a bundle of nerves about it. I already did basic warm-up stuff, but otherwise I'm pretty cold cause I wanted a representative sample for criticism. It kills me to not save-scum so I look better, but that wouldn't actually help so there has been much pride swallowed. That's Kitchen Girl, King of the Fairies and Midnight on the Water, cause I wanted some over-lap with what I'd already posted. Just from looking at the video to upload it, I have some notes for myself so I guess that was good. Apparently I feel it's necessary to keep enough space between my left hand and the neck to drive a tank brigade through, just in case. So that and the weird angle I hold the neck at are two very big things to work on, as well as I can see all the tension in my right hand. On an actual cool note, I finally got around to getting decorative patches for my case and I am far too proud of myself for my stupid, hilarious choice in decoration : 
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Jan 25, 2022 18:34
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One BIG thing to help your speed, go back and watch your video and see how far your fingers come off the fretboard. You want to keep them close so they have less ground to cover getting back down. This did get me to drag the girl out of her case for the first time in a couple of years since I've been off in jazz/classical guitar land, so forgive my .. basically everything. But compare my finger lift to yours. There's where your speed comes from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=689wX7wmXDQ You can also make fun of my finger planting/picking, a bad habit at this point I'm unlikely ever to break. Your right hand beats the hell out of mine. e: Another thing to think about/work on for left-hand speed, when you have a run that goes like 0 2 3 5 3 2 leave your fingers down on the 2nd and 3rd frets all the way through. That way you don't need to refret those notes. When you play the note on the 5th fret with your ring finger, you should still be holding down fret 2 with your index and 3 with your middle. Then coming back down the scale are just lift offs. Cleaner legato, lets you do pull-offs as an ornament if you want, and just all around less opportunity for error. Sound great, keep going! Huxley fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Jan 26, 2022 |
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Jan 26, 2022 20:40
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Huxley posted:One BIG thing to help your speed, go back and watch your video and see how far your fingers come off the fretboard. You want to keep them close so they have less ground to cover getting back down. Yeah as I was uploading the video I saw my left hand and whoah. I abstractly knew about keeping my fingers close to the fret and was thinking that must be a thing to work on, but apparently my pinky and ring fingers are taking international flights in between notes and I never knew. I thought it was a two inch gap, tops. Nooooope. So in the short term I’m just trying just stay closer and in the medium I’m thinking if I can put something over my hand to stop me from being able to pull away. Like some kind of rod parallel to neck so it’s not touching me but I’ll bump into it if I pull away. Or just give my nephew candy to hold a ruler over my hand. Not gonna mock you posting your right hand. I just got out of the habit of letting my wrist and a chunk of my palm by the thumb just camp out on top of the bridge, which sounded as good as you’d imagine. Don’t know what’d help you, but I realized I was trying to keep track of where the mando was in space when I weren’t looking at it (kind of like you’d touch a wall in the dark), so I started practicing setting up a better reference point that doesn’t bind me up : currently it’s an exact spot on my forearm to one crook on the body, but I’m hoping to open it up more at some point. I just tried leaving my fingers still fretting like you suggested, and that’s a lot harder than it sounds! (You know, like everything so far.) But I think it’ll help a lot longterm. Especially if I already know a tune so I can sort of “plan out” how to transition between notes instead of just trying to quickly do one after the other. Are you still applying pressure on the frets you aren’t playing, or are your fingers just kind of waiting in position? Thanks for the help and encouragement. Hope luring you away from guitar and back to 5ths, a.k.a. God’s tuning, is good for you. PS until you called yours “old girl” I didn’t appreciate that I’d gendered mine and had utterly bizarrely strong opinions about it. My first reaction was, “what? No! Mandolins are clearly boys!” followed immediately by “did I just actually want to argue with how someone else refers to their inanimate object? Am I instrument sexist? What the gently caress, brain?”
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Jan 27, 2022 04:41
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Yeah the exact first thing I noticed was your fingers are going too far from the neck when you lift them. Technique looks good, maybe the right hand is a little stiff? I relax my grip to the point where I nearly drop the pick and then let it settle from there. If you like, I can hop on a brief video call and have a closer look, see if we can find some exact stuff to work on. Also for practice tunes I'm gonna suggest you have a look at the intro to Thile's Bittersweet Reel. The solo will knock you out but the intro has some really cool arpeggio stuff that will give your right and left hands a hell of a workout.
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Jan 28, 2022 17:51
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