I'm new to mandolin and although I have played acoustic guitar for many years I never played much in the way of melody or lead. One of the reasons I started with the mandolin was to begin learning celtic and other melodies. I have made a lot of progress. But I'm definitely a beginner or intermediate at best and I have a lot to learn.
Lately I have begun to speed things up a bit with many of the tunes and I am finding that my playing often becomes choppy when I get going at a faster pace. If I am playing in the range of 60 to 80 bbm I'm usually ok. But when I start going over that range I often find that my playing isn't smooth. I'm convinced that the source of the problem is my fretting hand, not my picking hand and I am beginning to think that a major part of the problem is related to my failure to pay close attention to keeping my fingers down on the fretboard as I move notes up a string and removing my fingers one at a time (depending on the situation of course) as I work down a scale. I tend to learn tunes (I play just about 100% by ear) at a very slow tempo and then when I start moving up the speed I discover that the fretting technique I burned into my fingers is not ideal and doesn't work smoothly at speed. Then it is very hard for me to go back and relearn my fingering - I have to almost go back to square one and learn the tune again at very slow speed concentrating hard on keeping my fingers down on the board to the extent possible. Basically its the old finger flapping issue rearing its ugly head from time to time.
Are you all strict with yourselves about this? Do you pay close attention and leave your fingers down on the board when possible? Do you have this same issue I am experiencing as far as a loss of rhythmic quality because of imperfect fretting technique? Any suggestions how to conquer this issue?
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