Beginning Instruction

[yankees1]

New to mandolin world! No instructor in my area so I need the best basic self taught dvd, book , etc to assit with my learning! I am 63 years young and did play the fiddle for a number of years but was only fair at it. Just ordered an Eastman 505 mando! Live in central Illinois! Not Chicago! :)

[bennyb]

Howdy Yank,
Eventually some will come along with good recs on dvds and books, and whatever else is available. But I'll put in my recommendation for the free tabledit program. You can download the free tefview program here (http://www.tabledit.com/?AfID=19329). After you've got that, you can go ....here...mandozine (http://www.mandozine.com/music/zipfiles.php) and download zip files written in tabledit and play them on your computer. You'll need to unzip them but your computer will probably do that automatically. One tip: there's a little "m" in the lower right corner of the tefview screen where you can cycle through notation, tablature, or both. There's a few thousand tunes available in this format on the mandozine site. You can slow them down to a crawl, and play along. I do. I have no connection with Tabledit(except happy user) or Mandozine(thanks John, for being there).

My best, benny

[Capt. E]

The Eastman 505 is a good mandolin to learn with. As far as books go, I like the Greg Horne series sold by Alfred, beginning and intermediate books especially.
The Mel Bay's Deluxe Bluegrass Mandolin Method by Ray Valla is pretty good also.

Also, find people to play with if you can.

[Alex Orr]

The Greg Horne books are fantastic. Also, you might want to pick up Mike Marshall's first Mandolin Fundamentals DVD and go through it at the same time. Lots of good foundational advice for the beginner. I'd suggest holding off on the second DVD until after you finish the first Horne book; it will probably make more sense at that point.

[yankees1]

I just ordered both ( Horne and Marshall). Thanks for suggestions!