Octave learning material?

[Phil1580]

Hey Cafe. Wondering what the consensus is on the best learning material (preferably printed) for octave mandolin. For reference: 15yr guitar player, 1yr mandolin and still pretty much new to mandolin. Never touched an OM before. I do not read/read music very slowly. Mostly chord charts & tab. Looking to use my OM for folk rock, maybe make a foray into Celtic instead of just listening. Thanks in advance for the always sage advice of the Cafe!

[Gerry Cassidy]

Well, you've been playing for awhile so I think you would probably benefit from John McGann's OM book. It's not for the beginner, but even though you are new to OM your dues paid on the guitar will definitely give you a head start.

John plays with amazing feel, and his choices of chord inversions are amazing. Heck, it's a great buy just to have the CD for a listen now and then!

[Eddie Sheehy]

The Bouzouki and Mandolin playing of Tim O'Brien. Tim actually uses an OM tuned GGDDAAEE... DVD and booklet...
I also got great mileage out of Zan McLeod's Bouzouki DVD and booklet - GGDDAADD tuning for zouk...

[IanBowden]

Hey, Phil!

What I've learned in my half decade of playing mando family instruments (which began with the OM after 35 years of guitar) is that you have to decide on the primary GDAE or GDAD tuning route at the outset. I began with the former and have only begun to learn the latter in the last couple of years. Something as simple as taking that high string and tuning it down a full step drastically changes the chordal sounds of the instrument and potentially limits its use for certain types of music.

GDAD tuning is definitely geared towards Irish and accompaniment to fiddle music and the like. It's good for both strumming and picking, but if you're outside of the keys of G or D you're in pretty weird territory, or have to use a capo to move to a different key. Using sliding partial chords up and down the neck make all sorts of wonderful noise with the open G or D acting as a drone in GDAD.

GDAE is certainly more logical with its perfect fifths string arrangement and ability to play fairly easily in most any key without using a capo. While your fingers can't span more than four frets on an OM, most of the chords for the mandolin are exactly the same on the OM. So, a lot of styles of music - both based on chords and picking individual notes - can be easily played on the OM.

The Zan McLeod DVD is an excellent intro to GDAD and I've played it dozens of times over and am still learning. The Tim O'Brien offering is not as good, IMHO, but decent enough for learning GDAE.

I learned mostly from trolling the interweb, obtaining chord charts, tablature, and notation for a variety of songs and tunes. You can also learn a heckuva lot just watching YouTube videos - many of them made by denizens of the Mandolin Café site - and just watch and listen carefully to what they play!

Best of luck on your quest to open your musical horizons!

Ian