Nellie Kane by Hotrize - Anyone know this or tried to learn it?

[sarai]

This has a catchy Mandolin solo that sounds deceptively simple. I slowed it down and learned it by ear but I am really struggling to bring it up to tempo. There is a lot of switching in between strings which is a manuver I generally struggle with but I've been playing this off and on for a year and I wish I could get it up to speed.

The advice for myself is...
1.) keep working with the metronome
2.) when I hit a stump, put it on the shelf for awhile

Do you have any advice for me?
Can you play it? What skill level would you categorize this?

[Markus]

Well, my band plays Nellie Kane in D so the solo, with it's extended use of the open E, doesn't really translate well to D.

To my ear, Tim approaches a kind of Jesse McReynolds crosspicking thing going on there, resembling a banjo roll. The longer I play music the more I realize that the right hand is the really hard part, the part that requires hours and hours and hours of repetition, rote work, and discipline to get right ... it's also the part that sets the great ones apart.

I've found two and three string picking patterns with the metronome seem to be helping my right hand get the exact fluency with my string spacing to hit stuff at speed. But until I can nail it [especially the right hand part], perfect 10, at a slower speed it just doesn't work at full speed. I'm getting Gold Rush up to our fiddler's somewhat speedy version and have realized the odd string crossings I just can't pick perfectly clean at the desired BPM and until I can I'm going to stumble those spots in the tune as I did last night. There's a month until our next gig, and now that I've got the right hand problem identified and a few weeks to click the metronome up in speed - once the muscle memory is there on the right hand, the melody can flow smoothly at the right speed.

I've collected some two and three string patterns, but as the McReynolds book by Andy Statman is out-of-print and go for more dollars than I can spend on a book I have yet to find enough to satisfy my desire for non-repetitive practice material - perhaps if I didn't practice as much? lol

[sarai]

I was just looking through the tab section of Mandolin Cafe and there was a tab version of Nellie Kane that looks a little simpler but I don't think it's 100% spot on.

Anyway - what you describe sounds similar to the challenge I'm having. Maybe you are practicing too much lol? But perhaps I just need mroe practice. I wish it came easier some days.