Learning plain old music notation.

[Ramdolph]

Ive played with ear method and plain old memorization, and tab. whats the best materials for original music notation for mandolin?

[Jim Garber]

I would say, find the music you like, maybe some tunes you know and practice reading. Fiddle tunes (if so inclined) are pretty good source material, relatively simple rhythm-wise. I find that the more difficult part of reading is reading complex or syncopated rhythms.

I always recommend this book by Sol Goichberg (http://www.elderly.com/books/items/189-13.htm). It starts relatively easy but builds so eventually you play in all keys.

[Chris Biorkman]

I'm going through Standard Notation for the Tab Addicted Mandolinist by Deborah Chen. I like it a lot. I tried to buy it from Elderly, but they had it backordered so I just Googled the title and bought it directly from the author.

[Don Christy]

I think Deborah Chen's (hope that's correct) book is a good start. Also, the flash cards on mandozine. With a little preliminary work it's been easy getting started with Marilynn Mair's book.
Don

[EdSherry]

If you can find a copy of Pete Seeger's "Henscratches and Flyspecks" (OOP), I like it a lot as an introduction to reading notation (not mando-specific), using folk melodies.

I also second (OK, third) the recommendation for Deborah Chen's book.

[Ramdolph]

Im not to good at tab, so whould deborah chens book still be the best?

[Red Henry]

When I began playing from notation again (after 35 years) I began with tunes from the big fiddle collections: Ryan's (One Thousand Fiddle Tunes) and O'Neill's. The advantages of this material include its wide variety while being presented (usually) in fairly simple notation, and in a pretty wide range of keys.

After four or five years, it's still a lot of fun to just open a page in those books and play twelve or fourteen tunes I haven't done before. Usually I can play the tune in time (slowly) about the second time through, and closer to tempo a time or two after that.

A bonus of this reading experience is that I've picked up several great tunes this way, which I probably would never have heard otherwise.

Red.

[Chris Biorkman]

Im not to good at tab, so whould deborah chens book still be the best?
Yes.

[gnelson651]

I used a beginning violin book "Essential Elements" to learn stanard notation. No tab but finger notations at first to started. At about $7.00, its a lot of bang for the buck.

[niaflsbob]

I KNOW THIS IS A ROUND ABOUT ANSWER, BUT I TOOK PIANO LESSONS FOR ABOUT 2 YEARS ( WHICH I REALLY ENJOYED) BEFORE BEING DRAWN BACK TO ACOUSTIC / BLUEGRASS MUSIC. LEARNING TO READ AND UNDERSTAND NOTES, TIMES ETC WAS A GREAT FOUNDATION. THE PIANO KEYBOARD IS A VERY LOGICAL LAYOUT. WHILE THIS MAY NOT BE THE WAY YOU WANT TO SPEND A FEW YEARS OF YOUR MUSICAL LIFE THE BENEFITS OF LEARNING TO READ, HOWEVER YOU DO IT, ARE IMMENSE.

[JeffD]

Grab yourself any of several good beginners violin books. They all teach reading notation, pretty much one string at a time. Same positions on mandolin.

[juddville]

The materials for reading by Debora Chen are excellent.
You can find her things at:

<http://www.stringthingm.com/>

by the way, there's no "h" in her name - Debora Chen

[arbarnhart]

A couple of things I do...

I have an easy fiddle book, "Kid Fiddle" with several standards in notation with each generally shown in a couple of keys.

We have a bunch of "general purpose" piano/guitar/vocal songbooks ranging from religous to rock to kids' music. Sometimes I will just flip through one and play vocal lines from songs I know. That's fun with the kids when I use a kids' book and play "name that tune".

[CrazyMandolin]

I'm currently working out of the fiddle fakebook for this purpose. My situation is a bit strange, though. I can read bass clef music very well owing to grade school tuba playing so my hurdle is the mental transposition between clefs. I still second JeffD's recommendation of fiddle books.

[billkilpatrick]

Ive played with ear method and plain old memorization, and tab. whats the best materials for original music notation for mandolin?
have a go with this:

http://www.theviolincase.com/Flashcards/index.htm

[August Watters]

For learning to read standard notation on mandolin, I find the Mel Bay Complete Mandolin Method (http://www.amazon.com/Bays-Complete-Mandolin-Method-93221/dp/0871667630/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203996039&sr=8-1) excellent.

Rich del Grosso's new Mandolin Method (http://www.amazon.com/Leonard-Mandolin-Method-Rich-DelGrosso/dp/0793568781/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203996142&sr=1-5) is good too.