Playin' Along...

[grsnovi]

I realize that we have many professional players on the board, but I suspect there are a lot of noodlers like me.

A friend of mine sent my a DVD that he recorded of Doyle Dykes doing a Taylor seminar. Doyle is a great guitar player (I really like his instrumental stuff, don't care for his tunes with vocals).

I spent the hour playing along.

I suppose I should get out more, maybe find "real" people to play with.

Anyone here have favorite recorded "play along" partners?

[Zed]

Yep... my computer. Well, actually me playing backup guitar and bass. Since i can't get my band to practice more than once a week, and i like to play sometimes every day... i had to create my own band.

[mandoJeremy]

SAM BUSH!

[mandolooter]

Tim Obrien and Da Dawg...Lands End and Sittin in Limbo. I still gotta long ways to go on both but the basic melodies are slowly coming to me.

[bluegrassjack2]

Ronnie McCoury for sure.

[Staramouche]

Dave and Jerry on "Shady Grove"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Joe

[Staramouche]

Dave and Jerry on "Shady Grove"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Joe

[Rich]

The new "Lost and Found" Cd is great. They don't play anything fast and everything perfect. The mandolin solos are crisp and slow so you can pick out every note. It makes a great Cd to play along with.

[bjc]

Greetings,

I've found a couple of companies that make jam-along CDs...not all of the material is "mando-friendly" i.e. some of the hard rock/metal, but there's a decent bluegrass CD available at cvls.com the exact page is http://cvls.com/mandolin.html, but they also have blues and jazz jam-along CDs. Jam Traxx also makes some cool jam CD's though they are more geared towards the 6 stringers.
The cool thing about these types of CDs is that it allowed me to experiment without making my band mates play the songs over and over again...They really did help me get started with improvising.

[Staramouche]

Did I mention Dave and Jerry on Shady Grove?

~~~~~~~~~~Joe (of the slippery double entry)

[Bluegrasstjej]

I like to play along with IIIrd Tyme Out because they use the same keys as I have to learn (B is awful to play, but that's the one key I sing best in!). Also Peter Rowan and Nashville Bluegrass Band doing "One Way", a very nice song to practice improvisation. For some reason I find it easy to improvise on that song, even if I have great difficulty with that normally.

[Mandodoc]

I the above post by bjc make that http://cvls.com/mandolin.html without the comma, otherwise it does not work.
jon

[Coy Wylie]

I found a 1975 concert of J.D. Crowe and the New South on Bluegrass Box that I've been playing along with lately. Skaggs on mando, Rice on guitar, Douglas on Dobro...wow. Lots of traditional tunes. My favorite from this concert is "Train 45."

[doanepoole]

One thing I've found that's cool to do is to take recordings that have no mandolin track and play mando along with them. Doc Watson albums are typically mandolin-free, and I've played with them alot in the past.

Also fun sometimes to play against recordings of genres where mandolin isn't usually found.

[Geoff]

Yep, Ive played along with the Shady Grove CD so many times. The Garcia Grisman self titled CD is great too. Russian Lullaby is alot of fun to play with. The Shady Grove songs are slow and just awesome. I also have a Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band CD I play with (hmm I have a trend going here...) There is a Grisman plus others disc I have called here today. Some of those tunes are really fast though, and theres some in the key of B, which I have alot of trouble with. I think I need some folks other than Garcia and Grisman to pick with though.

[Tennessee Jed]

Tony Rice and Norman Blake
Doc Watson
Jimmie Rodgers

I realize that most of these recordings don't have a mandolin but I can figure lots of them out and come up with my own mando part.

I've done the same with several tunes by the Byrds, the Grateful Dead, Woody Guthrie and Bob Wills.

[grsnovi]

That was my original point: playing along to a recording with NO recorded mandolin.