Solo Dial/Road Map: Good?

[telepbrman]

Is this a useful item, that Ron Green Solo Dial? Same for the Mandolin Road Map book? Thanx, dy.

[steve in tampa]

Anything that explains the circle of fifths can be useful.

The Ron Green Accompaniment Dial gives you some basic chord shapes for mando.

The Solo dial is a little more difficult to read on the fly when practicing.

Both have the same reference material on the back.

The FFcP Charts from Ted Eschliman are easier to follow for solo notation.

[RobP]

Nile's Pentatonic Mandolin now comes with fretboard diagrams of the scales. Check it out!

[John Flynn]

I have "The Dial" and I also have some other references like that, such as "Mandolin Scales and Studies." They are helpful up to a point. I personally have never gotten that much benefit from them, however. The way I learn the best is to get what I am working on into the "ear/hand coordination" realm as quickly as possible. The longer my eyes are involved, as they would have to be with something printed, the more I feel like it is rote learning that I may be able to demonstrate, but that I could not actually apply all that well in real time. When I can literally "do it with my eyes closed," that's when I have it. So these printed materials are fun to look at and get ideas from, but that is as far as it goes for me.