Beginner's Pickin' Circle

[Cragger]

I have been playing the mandolin for a little over a year and am doing fairly well. I have loaned my guitar to one of my friends and he is picking it up as well. His roommmate is learning the banjo and another friend is learning the mandolin as well. We got together last night and tried to play a little together. While it wasn't really music it was a lot of fun. I have played with a lot of people and keep up fairly well with more experienced players but I was kind of the leader. Scary. I was wondering what songs would be good for all of us to know. I know mostly fiddle tunes as the other mandolin player does. What are some common songs that banjo and guitar players learn that we could all play together?

[onlyagibsonisgoodenuff]

A lot of the music on Tony Rice's Bluegrass Album band recordings is pretty much standard fare at jams, and one of my favorite guitar- mandolin duet albums is the Skaggs & Rice recording. While I realize some of these might be difficult when you're just starting out, it's all pretty straight 3-chord stuff, with a few exceptions. Ricky does a good job of playing it straight on Skaggs-Rice, and I think most mandolin players can glean some good stuff from him there.

[Darren]

I would suggest visiting the site....http://www.jaybuckey.com

There is a section on his site where there is a ton of free tab. The best part about it is that for each song he includes free tab for Mando, Guitar, Banjo, Fiddle, and Bass. Not everything on there is Bluegrass but there is quite a bit. Check out the "Free Stuff" section.

[Cragger]

thanks for the info. i went to jay buckey's site and got some of the free stuff for each of us. i have four of his volumes already but a lot of them are a little more advanced breaks than i can play but it gives me something to work on. what i need is simple breaks for each instrument. i guess we will just come up with a group of songs and let everyone find the music that they think they could play.

[Pete Martin]

A simple break that always sounds good is play your interpretation of the melody. Never fails.

[Cragger]

yeah, i just need to find a place where i can finde the melody in guitar, mandolin, and banjo tablature of fairly common songs in common keys.

[Mark Normand]

Home Sweet Home can be a simple instrumental that everyone can learn quickly. We play it alot at jams. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif