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Happy St. Patty's Day from Mandolin Mondays! Trying to get my down, up, down, down, up, down on with this set of Irish jigs. These tunes have some of the most novel titles I could find: "The Cat's Meow," "Jump at the Sun," and "The Cowboy." Brought to you with festive faux green screen (its really just a painted green wall).



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This March marks the 2 year anniversary of my first record, Into the True Country. The album has played a huge part in bringing me to where I am now, and I'm so thankful for all the help I received to make the project a reality. So, to celebrate I'm giving away free downloads of the whole record on Noisetrade for the remainder of the month! Click HERE to get your own copy, and help spread the word to all your friends!



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I recently cooked up this chord melody arrangement of the great jazz waltz, "Skating in Central Park" by John Lewis. I first heard the tune off of the Bill Evans and Jim Hall duo record, Undercurrent. Both the tune and the record have become fast favorites. It was fun trying out some false harmonics with this one.



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I went full nerd this week! It's the 20th anniversary of the classic Pokemon Red and Blue Gameboy games. I remember playing these when I was a wee lad and figured a couple others might recall the relentlessly catchy sound track. So here's a little selection of some of the classy 8-bit music composed for the game by Junichi Masuda. Nerd on!



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Happy President's Day! Today, here's a rendition of everybody's favorite presidential fiddle tune, originating back to the playing of the great old time fiddler Ed Haley. I picked up a few licks from other versions by John Hartford, Stuart Duncan, and Adam Steffey, and I threw in a few licks of my own too. Hope you enjoy!



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Trying to channel my inner Don Stiernberg this week for this jazzy Randy Newman piece, "You've Got a Friend in Me," made famous by Pixar's Toy Story. Had to break out my "groove face" towards the middle there...



You can now get a tab/notation transcription for this video, and all of my other personal solo Mandolin Mondays arrangements on my Patreon site here: https://www.patreon.com/davidbenedictmandolin ...

Happy one month Mandolin Mondays anniversary! To celebrate, here's a very special installment--my most involved so far. Everybody loves TV, right? Here is a small representation of the theme songs from some of the most popular TV sitcoms dating from 1951 through 2013--all in their respective original keys.



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Time to use a big right arm and play some no nonsense old time music--complete with oldies records in the background. This is an incredibly fun, really crooked tune I learned from the playing Narmour & Smith by route of one of my favorite fiddlers, Rayna Gellert.



You can now get a tab/notation transcription for this video, and all of my other personal solo Mandolin Mondays arrangements on my Patreon site here: https://www.patreon.com/davidbenedictmandolin ...

Happy Mandolin Monday again! Here's a chord melody medley of three of my favorite Beatles tunes: "Day Tripper," "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," and "Lady Madonna." This arrangement was a particular challenge, trying to play the melody with those fun Beatles bass lines simultaneously.



You can now get a tab/notation transcription for this video, and all of my other personal solo Mandolin Mondays arrangements ...

Happy early Stephen Foster Memorial Day (Jan 13th)!! For the second installment of my weekly Mandolin Mondays music videos, here's an original rendition of this great American songwriter's well known tune, "Hard Times Come Again No More." I had fun exploring a lot of chord melody and crosspicking possibilities with this one.



You can now get a tab/notation transcription for this video, and all of my other personal solo ...