Playable breaks to copy... err, I mean, inspire

[danmills]

I've been playing bluegrass mandolin for about a year now, after 25+ years of acoustic guitar, mostly in other styles. I'm having a blast, and I'm making decent progress. Some of my practice time is spent working out breaks from recordings, note for note if I can get it (I use Amazing Slow Downer a LOT), but the real goal is to absorb the musical ideas and improve my fretboard awareness.

As a relative newcomer to the genre, I'm looking for more suggestions of specific recordings to use this way. What works best is good quality recordings of songs that include tasteful but not overly fast or complicated mandolin breaks. I'm not ready for lengthy fast single note licks. (Through the miracle of modern software, I can usually figure them out, but I can't play them up to speed.) I love finding rhythmically interesting stuff played out of relatively easily fingered positions, with lots of double stops and that sort of thing.

Lately I've been listening to Red Allen and Frank Wakefield's "Kitchen Tapes" CD on David Grisman's label. It's just the two of them, so all the breaks are mandolin, and some of them are doable. Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Dan

[mandofiddle]

Hey Dan,
If you haven't already, you should go over to the Mandozine website and download some of their tabledit files. And get Tabledit if you don't have it. There are a lot of breaks over there all tabbed out already as well as fiddle tunes and such, and Tabledit can play them with MIDI too. For me, its quicker to learn from those than from the Amazing Slow Downer, though the ASD is a great tool. Especially if the break you want to learn isn't tabbed out. You'll get the same absorbtion of musical ideas and such from the tabledit files.

http://www.mandozine.com/music/zipfiles.php

[danmills]

Thanks for the tip, and I will check them out (already started to, in fact), but I'm mostly trying to avoid using tab for this kind of improvisational stuff. I used it a lot with guitar for decades, so I know how it works (for me), and I just don't get the same connection between brain, ear, and hand that I do when I learn by ear. If I learn from tab, I tend to remember it visually and play it by rote. If I learn from a recording, it's slower and less precise, but I remember it more in terms of the music, and I find I have a better chance of coming up with variations and applying the ideas in other songs.

I still use tab for fiddle tunes on the mando, but I'm not even sure that's such a good idea (again, for me), because I find it next to impossible to improvise around the fiddle tunes I know.

Having said all that, I won't hesitate to use the transcriptions on Mandozine if... correction, when I get stumped. Thanks again for the tip.
Dan

[Albert Whiting]

if you are wanting to play bluegrass the best thing to start with is monroe stuff. it is really bluesy and there are some cool licks. after you get some of that stuff then check tyminski, steffey, bibey. then when some of that stuff then i would check out thile and leftwich.

[Vincent]

danmills- I'd recommend two recordings- not "original sources" but clean recordings with simple tasty breaks/fills/kickoffs. Skaggs & Rice (the brother duet album) and the more recent Meet Me in the Moonlight with Don Rigsby and Dudley Connell. Both albums are mostly mandolin and guitar, lots of Monroe licks and a *relatively modern* sound.

[batman]

get a copy of Kenny Baker plays Bill Monroe. I believe it's Bill playing on this cd. get tunes and not really very fast. Don Batten

[doanepoole]

Roland White's Bluegrass Mandolin book might be a good resource. It has many commonly-played tunes with relatively easy breaks, and there is a CD that plays each break slow, then at a moderate tempo. This book gives you a good starting point to navigate the fretboard (up to fret 7) in the most common bluegrass keys - A, C, D, and G. I think it is a good resource to get at the soul of playing melodic bluegrass breaks.

I'd recommend some Roland White recordings, but I'm not too familiar with his recorded work outside of the Kentucky Colonels, but alot of that stuff is so fast it may be innaccessible. But those Kentucky Colonel recordins are loaded with gospel tunes, where the turnarounds are quite accessible.

I personally feel Roland White is one of the better bluegrass mandolinists out there. Very tasteful.

But you can't beat the source...Bill Monroe. I second the previous recommendation for the album "Kenny Baker plays Bill Monroe". Indeed, Bill Monroe is the sole mandolinist on that recording.

[Pete Martin]

I like the breaks on the "Skaggs and Rice" duet recording (Rounder label). Those are very playable, but you will learn a ton about BG mando.