This past weekend was a wonderful mandolin event. the Foothills Bluegrass Society in Calgary held "Chinookgrass Academy", a weekend workshop covering guitar, banjo, fiddle, dobro, and mandolin with various recording artists. The mandolin instructor was none other than John Reischman!

I learned a tremendous amount. We started out on a discussion on tone generating technique--picks, pick angle, etc. WE then discussed pick direction technique, which was emphasized by learning a number of tunes, including some of John's originals. Most of the rest of the workshop concentrated on playing doublestops and doublestop melodies, and included additional tunes as exercises. Then, to conclude the weekend we had a concert by all of the instructors.

Misc. thoughts:
-Heck of a nice guy, that Reischman. Nice dry sense of humour.
-John's new DMM Gibson is a wonderful instrument!
-Turtle shell really is all of that, but tortis sounds almost exactly the same. ProPlecs are close, but missing a touch of the top end.
-the other folks in the workshop were a delight to meet
-I need to practice more

Keep your eye out for next year's workshop!