The time of year where most Europeans go on their summer holidays has started. Urban myth has it that Paris is left to the tourists in August (although apparently more Parisians are staying around because vacations are prohibitively expensive), the UK lures individuals with time to spare to its many music festivals (personally, I'm looking forward to Broadstairs Folk Week from Friday onwards), and offices at the educational institutions - including the one where I work - are empty. So I thought it would be fun to start a thread about whether you are planning any special mandolin-related activities in this late-summer period. I'll go mando-spotting at Broadstairs and try to make it to the three local Irish sessions that I'm aware of. I also plan to use my free time to learn to use my metronome for practice, and to try some video recording of my feeble efforts at learning mandolin. If I'm lucky, I'll find a copy of Dagger Gordon's Scottish Mandolin Tutor to add to my collection of instructional books with which I make slow progress. How about you?
Only caught this one now Gelensbury. I took the family over to Ireland which was as wet as always. However I made sure the youngster took his fiddle and I took the mandolin. We went to the Kilrush music festival which was on at the same time. He did a morning of lessons on the fiddle with a wonderful teacher. Then he had to teach the tunes to me so we could play them. Great fun. Then we had the Wadebridge folk Festival (our local town) but I only managed to get to my usual bluegrass session on the Thursday as too much else going on. Next up is the inagural Mandolin Orchestra Of Devon meeting Saturday 10th Sept. No idea what to expect but it looks like it should be well worth taking part. Then there's getting a local mandolin 'self-help' group off the ground in September, and digging my cello out to get the cobwebs blown off that before the local orchestra kicks off again. End of October I'm signed up for the Sorefingers Bluegrass weekend. Busy but hopefully fun autumn lined up. What have others been doing/planning?
