Beatles On Solo Mandolin - Mandolin Tribute To The Beatles

[Risto]

Hello,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qVWMGKEPcG0

Here is a video of me playing a solo mandolin concert featuring my own arrangements of 12 classic Beatles tunes. I'm a Finnish mandolin player and it would be great to hear what other mandolin players think about the arrangements and the playing!

One of my goals with this concert was to make the mandolin more well-known to the general public here in Finland and showcase its different possibilities outside of the traditional Folk Music genre. From Bach to bebop, everything is possible with this tiny eight-string instrument!

- Risto

[Perry]

Nice work...super lively room

[Caleb]

Excellent playing and tone. Well done!

[The Past and The Curious]

Yeah, man!

[GreenMTBoy]

That was great Risto,Bravo

[Mark Gunter]

Good work Risto, thanks for sharing.

[Joey Anchors]

Very nice performance! What's the mandolin you are playing here?

[Pittsburgh Bill]

NICE PLAYING! Arrangements are cool,
Thank you

[John Flynn]

You said, "...it would be great to hear what other mandolin players think about the arrangements and the playing!" First let me say that your technique, tone and arrangements are amazingly good. You're way better than I am, so I won't comment further on your abilities as a mandolinist. I do, however have a second perspective.

As a fan of instrumental Beatles music, however, I also ask myself, "Would I buy an album of this?" Let me say my favorite in that context right now is "Any Time At All - a Session Picker's Tribute to the Beatles" by Brian Hebert and Friends. What I like about that album is that while it is a complete instrumental rearrangement, the Beatles' melodies always come across loud and clear, and even the "feel" of the Beatles comes through. I could drop in on the middle of any of those tracks, not knowing what track it is and instantly know the Beatles' tune they are playing, where they were in the tune and be "grooving" with it. The arrangement and the embellishments never smother the melody or the feel.

I felt in most of your arrangements, you embellished the tune at the expense of the melody and feel. It was like you were trying too hard to show your stuff. There were exceptions, like "8 days a week" and "When I'm 64." Just my humble opinion, as a fan who buys albums, but also happens to dabble at mandolin.

[Risto]

Thank you all for your likes and comments, it feels great to get feedback from fellow mandolinists! The mandolin I'm playing here is a 2014 Gibson F9, a pretty nice axe!

Special thanks to you John for your more detailed review. I certainly understand your opinion about the arrangements. I know they are not the most basic mandolin arrangements around and some of them differ a lot from the original recordings, but that is how I wanted to play them. One of my goals was to see how far I can reach with the mandolin as a solo instrument and as a mandolin player at the moment and feel pretty good about the end result. The tunes are definitely my own interpretations of classic Beatles songs, not note-for-note transcriptions. I think one can still hear the basic melodies and harmonies in my arrangements but some of them certainly have a pretty different feel to them. I know it's important to get the melody across unless you play jazz mandolin (which I did in this concert to some extent), I'll try to keep that in mind in future as well. Thanks yet again for your feedback :)