Alto Clef for the Tab-Addicted Mandolist

By Mandolin Cafe
May 14, 2009 - 2:00 pm

Berkeley, Calif. &mdash Debora Chen's String Thing Music has released "Alto Clef for the Tab-Addicted Mandolist", supplying the aspiring mandolist (or mandolinist with a taste for lower notes) with a succinct and painless way to learn to read alto clef.

About the book:

This is the alto clef edition of Debora's 2007 book, "Standard Notation for the Tab-Addicted Mandolinist" and features the same systematic, fun, and logical approach, transposed to the mandola register and clef.

Composed specifically for the plucked string, "Alto Clef for the Tab-Addicted Mandolist" will bring you to alto clef fluency on a mandola faster than trying to cobble together excercises from viola methods. Like its treble clef predecessor, this book shows you how to stop struggling to identify notes one at a time and move quickly to recognizing musically meaningful patterns while playing with efficient fingering.

It includes targeted, step-by- step examples, ranging from very easy to more advanced (cross-picking and chord melody), based on classic melodies like "Simple Gifts" (traditional), "Ode to Joy" (Beethoven), and "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" (Bach). It also includes several original jigs and reels composed specifically to simultaneously encourage good technique in both right and left hands while giving you the necessary skills to break away from tab and into the string quartet/orchestral literature. It's a well thought out book and moves along quickly enough to be rewarding and fun without being overwhelming.

About the author:

Debora Chen minored in music composition at MIT where she studied with Peter Child, and Pulitzer Prize Winner/MacArthur Fellow, John Harbison. She has provided extensive music transcription/editing for acclaimed acoustic-musician Mike Marshall on his innovative mandolin method books, and rush transcriptions for the studio of Grammy-nominated composer Ed Bogas, and was on the faculty at Mandolin Symposium from 2005-2008. In addition, she has arranged several movements from the Bach Suites for Unaccompanied 'Cello for mandolin, and is the author of two additional books for mandolin. Three of her orchestral compositions have premiered in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Purchase: from author