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  1. Long time off

    The past few years have been difficult for various personal reasons, and this year has been a bit of a tipping point for me. It just got so that playing the mandolin brought no joy--or seemed too much of an effort to bother.

    So, I went on a hiatus for a while, and knowing that exercise helps mild depressions, I placed some focus there for a while. After some minor surgery on my wrist (mentioned in the forums) I started reading the forums again, and listening to the mandolin music ...
  2. The Mandolin Cafe iPhone App

    iPhone owner? There's a new way to connect to the Mandolin Cafe thanks to mandolin player and ace programmer Steve Smith who makes his home in Florida. Meet v1 of the Mandolin Cafe iPhone App, available for free from the Apple App Store, developed by Steve as his first steps into programming for the iPhone. We think he did a terrific job.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    What's in it? For starters there's a mandolin chord finder, a simple hook into the MP3 of the Day, a search ...
  3. Getting Old

    When I think about it, a lot of my life has been dedicated to being an effective old guy. Learn to play mandolin, learn to fly fish, learn to smoke cigars, learn to drink bourbon, learn to tell good stories, learn to talk with people and make them feel welcome, learn how much nonsense to tolerate and how to handle things when the limit has been exceeded, all the stuff you expect a person who has been around to know how to do.

    And I started early. I mean do the math. If you want to ...
    Tags: old guy
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  4. Embroidered case cover from Colorado Case

    Awhile back we asked Colorado Case Company to digitize a Mandolin Cafe case sticker for embroidery onto one of their case covers we were purchasing, and it arrived today. Alas, as things go, when we asked them about this we had a nifty old case to put it on, but sold it recently.

    ... and of course you know what that means.

    We'll just have to find an old 23 snakehead plus period case to put this thing on. What's a fella to do, otherwise?

    ...
  5. Infinite moments, finite minutes

    So this week the jam was at my house. Our normal venue, where we have our jam on stage, and where we don’t charge them a dime, our normal venue every now and then thinks they can do better. So every other month or so they book a rock band to play on our jam night and tell us to git.

    Anyway, on those evenings the jam meets at my house. Tonight we had four fiddles, three mandolins, two guitars, and a flute. Oh and the piano. We played lots of tunes that featured arpeggios in the B part, ...
    Tags: jam, joy
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  6. 11-20 - Things You Didn't Know About the Mandolin Cafe

    Didn't lose you last time? Let's try harder. We had fun in a previous post presenting some tips and tricks to navigate this site more effectively, but let's get a little more involved.

    11. Search the Mandolin Cafe from your browser's default search bar, from anywhere on the web.

    Proof we wilfully engage in stupid web tricks.

    Example: observe the screen shots of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and FireFox below, the two most widely used browsers on the ...

    Updated Aug-06-2010 at 11:33am by Scott Tichenor

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  7. 10 Things You Probably Don't Know About The Mandolin Cafe

    ... and may not care about after reading them all.

    1. OK, first, let me get this off my chest. It's..

    Mandolin Cafe
    not
    Mandolin Café

    The acute accent at the end of Café might look good if you're a French restaurant, but this place is a diner. Customers here put their elbows on the table, belch, wear their ballcaps and wipe their hands on their jeans. Just like I do. Now, I like a fine 6-course, one-seating dinner where the menu is selected ...
  8. RMI oh my!

    Sorry for no more camp posts. I started getting pain in my shoulder. I suspect my problem may be a repetitive motion issue from too much heavy typing with an old style keyboard.
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  9. 1st Day of Class

    Having Gerald as an instructor was as much fun as I thought it would be. We did a lot of work on arpegios in the morning an chord melody basics in the afternoon.

    There are a lot of great players here. I listen to the jams and I feel I could play in most of them - that's a big change from my first visit here. I even know I do some things better. I being careful of my shoulder coming off of the RMI problem. I'm keeping this short for the same reason.

    Went to the slow ...
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  10. Instructor Change

    At orientation tonight I learned we have an instructor change for mandolin. Gerald Jones is going to teach instead of Nate Lee. Nate is a great player but so is Gerald and Gerald is a much more seasoned veteran player and teacher.

    Everybody's favorite vocal teacher Dede Wyland has had another brush with the big C. The prognosis is good but she just finished chemo and the docs said she should not travel. The delightful Chris Sanders is subbing for her.

    The irrepressible ...
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