What helped you the most when you were just starting out?

[John Balog]

Well, today is the big day and my mandolin should be waiting for me tonight when I get off work! I can't wait to get started, but I also know how important it is to both ingrain good habits early, and set up a practice routine that works.

So, looking back on your first days as a mandolinist, what piece of advice/book/online video/practice exercise etc did you find the most helpful? If your spouse/child/sibling/good friend was just starting out, what would you recommend to help get them started right?

Also, anyone in the Bothell or Seattle area that feels like meeting up with a newb and making sure I'm not making a mess of things?

[JeffD]

What helped me most in the first year was playing regularly with others. I played at parties and at a regular jam session and with a community rinkytink string band. I spent a few months up front, obvioulsy, figuring which end gets hot first, but then I dragged myself out in public. Looking back am sure everyone was very patient with how I sounded.

The point is that having a lot of folks who I "played" with, who cared about my progress, who helped a newbie out, and to whom I felt I had to show some progess, it really cemented me to the mandolin and my commitent to take it seriously.

[pickinpete]

You've already started out right by joining here. Best advise I got and give to new players is dont get in a hurry. This is a lifelong persuit and you need to concentrate on starting off with solid basics. Mike Marshalls two Homespun DVD's is essential for getting good footing with proper technic, good habits, chord study and all around basics. If you find a good teacher, do it, you'll get there faster.

[terzinator]

Proper right-hand technique... wish I'd learned that first thing.

(that your wrist should move more like you're shaking someone's hand, rather than turning a key in a lock)

Like Pete said, Mike Marshall's vids discuss this (as well as the proper way to hold the pick), and there are a few threads bouncing around here on right-hand technique and pick hold... read 'em!

Good luck and have fun!

[pickinpete]

Also as soon as possible start picking out melodies by ear, anything you know really well. Happy birthday, london bridge, the flintstones..anything you can hum by memory. sit with your mandolin in front of the tv and radio and try to copy whatever you hear. The more of this you do the quicker you will be improvising and building that ear.

[Avi Ziv]

What helped me the most was getting a very good teacher right at the beginning. He gave me foundation and principles that are with me until today. Unfortunately I couldn't keep up the lessons for as long as I would have liked, but the time we spent together was invaluable.

[Mandobart]

With a solid background in violin and guitar I wasn't starting out at ground zero, I already knew the scales in most keys. What I didn't know were chord positions on the mandolin. So I got a Mel Bay book of mandolin chords and worked up the I, IV, V, relative minor and assorted chords in the keys of A, C, D, E and G as well as Am, Em and Dm (most common keys you'll likely run across). Then I learned a few of my standard guitar tunes on mandolin. During this time I found a real friendly weekly jam in my area and started going and playing along. Total agreement with JeffD above; nothing (except individual lessons in person with a good teacher) well help your progress more than regularly playing with others.

[JeffD]

One of the things an instructor provides, besides the obvious how to information, is that your instructor is indeed another person with whom you meet on a regular basis, and to whom it matters that you make progress.

Music is social, other people are crucial.

[SincereCorgi]

What helped me the most was getting a very good teacher right at the beginning. He gave me foundation and principles that are with me until today. Unfortunately I couldn't keep up the lessons for as long as I would have liked, but the time we spent together was invaluable.

Second this, a couple words and explanations from a teacher at the very beginning can make a huge difference down the road.

[John Balog]

Excellent point re teacher and social playing. We're re-arranging the house in anticiapation of our daughter's arrival. We've been looking for a place to put her keyboard so we can play together.

[Bob DeVellis]

Although it seems ridiculously obvious in retrospect, what was very helpful was being very analytic about problems I encountered. When a section of a tune jumped the tracks, I learned that if I figured out carefully and slowly what was happening, I could often figure out how to fix it. It might be a matter of pick direction or pick grip; it might be a matter of a finger deadening an adjacent string. Whatever it was, examining what was going on note by note usually revealed the specific stumbling block.

[Jim Ferguson]

I agree with JeffD........get out and jam.....jam.....jam.......with folks you enjoy playing with or even those you don't know say at a bluegrass festival etc. When you play with folks who might be better than you it really inspires you to work on your instrument so that you can feel like a player. I remember my 1st time jamming with a real good bluegrass band who was visiting in Nome, AK for our FolkFest a # of years back........we were jamming & all of a sudden it was "my turn" to take the lead.....well I plucked my way through as best I could & everybody simply charged forward with the song as if I were a pro!!!
Re: books etc......I found that when I 1st started up I enjoyed the Fretboard Roadmap for Mandolin book........great lessons in it to practice.......I then threw caution to the wind & started jamming with anyone & everyone I could find & that really helped & then I became a regular at the open mics etc. The Bert Casey book Mandolin Primer series is a good book to help you BUT use it as prep for getting out & jamming. There is no substitute for jamming. Yes a teacher would be great if you can afford it BUT allow yourself the opportunity to fall in love with your mando by playing it as often as you can on your own & with others. Also......lots of great mando lesson videos on You Tube.......check those out.......they have been great fun. Lastly.......develop your ear & mand talents by listening to as much music of the genre you are interested in and playing along with your mando. I have done that many times listening to Sirius Bluegrass & what a blast that has been.....great fun.
Peace,
Jim

[JeffD]

Music teachers report that the number one predictor of success, (success=student will stick with it), is playing on a regular basis with other people.

[Loretta Callahan]

Start with good mandolin holding techniques. Holding the neck wrong can cause wrist and arm problems later on. Don't learn jigs from a fiddle player, lol .... and watch this video from Mike Marshall that has been shared a lot on the cafe. If you can afford a good teacher ... even better.

I followed Jeff's advice to play with other folks ... has made a huge difference in my playing.

There are folks in your area that play the mandolin. Met one lovely lad at a session here in Portland from your neck of the woods.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Not ever having played Mandolin before,& not knowing any other players,i bought the only tuition DVD i could find at the time,the one by Chris Thile.I knew that it wasn't for beginers,but i had no choice. As it turned out,his advice on how to hold a pick & about picking 'action',proved very helpful indeed. It only took me a couple of months to be able to retain the pick in my 'approximate vicinity',after that it was simply down to practicing (copying) what i'd seen.
The biggest thing to help one's self,is 'doing it'. My initial practicing was done in order to control my grip on the pick & to cleanly hit the strings i was aiming for & not the ones i didn't want - it came eventually. I then set about transfering several of my 'old standard' banjo tunes over to Mandolin. I'm an ear player,& have been for close to 50 years. I learned where to find the 'sounds' on the Mandolin that i was hearing in recordings & tried to incorporate those into my playing,up & down the fingerboard & well over the 12th fret. I know that they're 'notes',but listening to a recording,i couldn't tell right off which 'notes' i was hearing,but i found the 'sounds' & of course that 'named the notes' for me.
It really is down to practicing & for me,regardless of what others do or might tell you,you'll still have your 'own things' that you want to practice. For some it's the technical approach & they practice the 'technical' things such as scales etc.,for others like me,i prefer to get right on & play tunes.That doesn't mean that i neglect to learn the occasional scale or 3,but that comes as an addition to my 'music' playing,
Ivan

[mandolirius]

Proper right-hand technique... wish I'd learned that first thing.

Ditto.

[Trevor Thomas]

I’d definitely say make sure you sort your right hand out early on. Right hand technique is 99% of why things sound good or bad.

For me the big factors in getting started were
1) a bunch of friendly older guys (in their 40s) who encouraged me to keep turning up and playing with them.
2) I spent about a year listening to said older guys before trying to join in in public.
3) I found a bunch of people more my age group (in my 20s) who played more tunes than songs, and who were enthusiastic and full of energy.
4) I learnt a bunch of tunes. People sometimes talk about practising scales, but I found that learning tunes meant I knew where the notes were in a scale were anyway. Learning a bunch of tunes gave me a ‘vocabulary’ to draw on when I was called on to do a solo.
5) My second mandolin was louder than my first, but it had no sustain whatsoever. Suddenly I could be heard better, in a jamming context, but my habit of using hammer ons and pull offs to get the notes had to be abandoned, because they weren’t audible. This made me learn how to pick every note, think about alternate picking, get better at tremolo etc. all of which was highly useful and has stood me in good stead over the years.
6) But I think that overall, the biggest help to getting started was having a context/incentive to play in the first place (see 1 and 3).

Basically I’m endorsing everything the others have said. Play with others as much as possible, and make your right hand a priority.

[JeffD]

I found that vitamin B-12 is helpful too.

Well I am kidding, but seriously for a second, the connection between good overall health and enjoyment of playing mandolin should be emphasized at least once.

[Barefoot Bud]

Also as soon as possible start picking out melodies by ear, anything you know really well. Happy birthday, london bridge, the flintstones..anything you can hum by memory. sit with your mandolin in front of the tv and radio and try to copy whatever you hear. The more of this you do the quicker you will be improvising and building that ear.

That's really good advice. I wish I learned the fretboard earlier than I did. Tabs without the context of some theory really held me back. I've never had anyone to play with or a teacher, so the cafe has been the biggest help. By coming here daily and gleaning info from the forum I have definitely seen a big improvement in my playing as well as general knowledge about mandolins.

Plus, if you aren't able to find jams, you could always join the song-a-week social group here. You could post videos of your playing there and receive feedback and encouragement.

Good luck to ya. Enjoy the journey. As they say, it doesn't take long to learn it, but it takes a life-time to master it.

[Ivan Kelsall]

I've taught myself a huge load by using the I'net Bluegrass radio stations as an 'on-line' jam session & trying to play along.I tune into 'The Bluegrass Mix' or 'Front Porch Bluegrass' & pick along.You never know what's coming up & you're in at the deep end with both feet. I've also downloaded plenty of YouTube clips to my PC,that way i can 'see' as well as hear what the players are doing.Here's one i downloaded a few weeks back,some nice Mandolin playing in one of my favourite songs,done by the new line-up of
"Flamekeeper" with Ashby Frank on Mandolin :- http://youtu.be/gKyR8fw4s8k
Ivan

[JeffD]

I do something similar with my mp3 collection of old timey and early bluegrass. I just put it on random and play along. Its real good ear training.

[journeybear]

What helped me the most was the nearly complete vacuum of information about the mandolin that existed for me in my area at the time. I didn't feel that way back then, and it was frustrating, but I worked through it. It meant I had to figure nearly everything out for myself, with the help of a book of chords and some music books by bands whose songs I knew. It took some doing, some weed and solitude and bashing, but eventually, through trial and error, imagination and discovery, and most of all the scientific method - experiment, observe, and adjust - I figured out pretty much all I needed to learn how to play, and also to learn how to learn more. Thank goodness I lived in a time before the internet, so I didn't even have the option of asking complete strangers how to do what I should have been able to figure out on my own. I am so grateful for that. I have a tendency to be lazy, and if I had had access to a device that allowed me to ask the simplest questions of some of the world's foremost experts, or even just folks with years of experience, I probably never would have been able to learn as much as I have. My advice to you is to unplug right now, take your mandolin into a field far from other people's ears and tongues, and learn for yourself. Spend as much time as you can with your instrument, keep your mind open, listen to your heart, keep true to your own inspiration, and the learning will come. One of my favorite Dead quotes is: "I can tell your future / just look what's in your hands." What do you see - a computer or a mandolin?

[SincereCorgi]

...this all kind of reminds me of a story about a cellist who was writing a method book. His houseguest, an extremely famous soloist, looked over it and said "I too, should write a method book. It will be around 1,400 pages and called 'How Not To Play the Cello'."

In other words, all this is great advice, but it's much harder to warn somebody about all the stuff that can trip them up. Let me try (this really messed me up): practice loud!

[Trevor Thomas]

"What helped me the most was the nearly complete vacuum of information about the mandolin that existed for me in my area at the time. I didn't feel that way back then, and it was frustrating, but I worked through it. It meant I had to figure nearly everything out for myself, with the help of a book of chords and some music books by bands whose songs I knew. It took some doing, some weed and solitude and bashing, but eventually, through trial and error, imagination and discovery, and most of all the scientific method - experiment, observe, and adjust - I figured out pretty much all I needed to learn how to play, and also to learn how to learn more."

Jouneybear, what a fantastic description! This was exactly how it was for me, too. "Tomorrow Night, Mick Rafferty's going to sing such-and-such a song, and he sings it in F. How the hell do you play in F? OK, counting up from my open D it's one, two, three frets. OK, I need to start from there - where's the next note? OK and the one after that? Hm." - and then "When I play that string crossing bit, it sounds loads worse than the rest of it. Why's that? What am I doing wrong? Ah! My right hand can't get back in time - maybe if I keep it in an up and down motion, it'll sound better?"

Sometimes very exciting, sometimes very frustrating, this was my learning journey as well!

[Markus]

Warning: I'm wordy and caffeinated this morning ... not an expert.


Work on your right hand. It always needs work.

Take some lessons before you put in hundreds of hours of practicing bad technique. I paid my instructor good money to call me on everything, to say `your right hand is just terrible' in a fashion that would haunt me for months. Probably the single most useful thing for me [a converted guitarist], it's odd to say that some of the best money I ever spent on music was to pay to have someone say painful things I didn't want to hear.

Play with others. It's good to learn tunes other people bring to the table, forced me to learn all sorts of things in the process and taught me a lot about how to play a supportive role. It's also a whole lot of fun, an important part of playing music.

Play daily, if just for a little bit. Make it a part of your regular life ... people above mentioned playing along to TV jingles/etc/etc and I agree. This does not replace regular, disciplined practice - it's a complement. After a couple years, I never really formally practiced guitar, I just jammed and `played along' ... while my touch with the instrument improved as did my ability to play by ear, my technical skills never advanced in a meaningful way. I know the day I quit visiting my practice spot, looking at that music stand is the day I stop actively progressing. I have my practice spot, I visit it daily ... but my mandolin is in my hands many more times a day than just practice, many days a good hour or more.

When you sit down to practice, slow down and only practice perfect. Bob DeVellis mentions how he analyzes phrases he's not playing perfect, which is quite similar to what I learned from my mando instructor in how to break things down to short phrases where you analyze picking, left hand, string crossings and how you're fingering it, and so on. You'll get a thousand times more pride when you take the `only play it clean' approach and finally get it up to speed, as it will sound GOOD.

Speaking of that, metronomes are incredibly frustrating for the first while of practicing with them ... but are invaluable, especially once you start playing in groups. You don't want to sound like a machine, but it's impossible to accurately vary from and play around the beat if you cannot perfectly hit the beat. Don't get hung up on it right away [plenty to work on first], but realize you will become friends with it at some point.

Think about where you want to be in six months, a year, and five years. Realize it might take that long and work every day towards that. This is a lifelong hobby, I picked up the mandolin seriously thinking about how much fun I'm going to have playing it in a number of years. It goes slow at first, but with dedication and regular practice it accelerates.

Keep some track of your progress - I have `I know it' song list and a `working' song list and every few weeks will note at what speed I can play a piece perfectly. I might not think I make much progress in a month, but when I look 3 months back it becomes evident my songlist is growing and everything has sped up significantly.

More than anything, have fun. Journeybear has great advice there ... get into playing mandolin for yourself, for the fun of it. If you have fun playing music, it shows in the music and makes you a fun person to jam with.