I attended a jam recently and discovered a couple of things about my mando playing/progress. 1. I've spent a lot of time on learning fiddle tunes at the expense of chords. 2. I'm overwhelmed at the number of chord positions and confused at times regarding which one I should be using. Its funny as I taught myself guitar many (many) years ago by learning basic chords and then later began to dabble in playing any basic lead. It's kind of opposite of what I'm doing with mandolin. I know now I really need to devote part of my practice time to chords and making smooth chord changes. I'm also confused regarding what chord shape I should be using. I know the basic positions for the chop chords when needed but during other non-bluegrass songs, I'm not really sure which is best. I know there isn't likely a good answer to that but I am curious to here from others that have been playing for a while and what approach they used in their learning process. Thanks for listening. -Bill
I play at home alone for the most part so play only melody. But in the back of my mind I know I'm going to need chords so about once a week I practice I,!V,V transitions in G and D using 7-5-2-3 G, 5-2-3-X C, 9-7-4-5 A . and 7-4-5-X D. I also practice 4-2-2-4 E, 4-2-2-3 Em, which leads to moving up 2 for F and Fm. I sorta sometimes practics 2-2-3-5 Am . too
I am new to all this but have decided to make myself learn the G & D 4 finger chop chords and practice transitioning between them with a C Em etc thrown in. If I ever make it to a jam I want to be able to contribute something. I figure if we can play those fluidly we should be able to play about any chord.
Hi guys. I think learning chords is more enjoyable it you have some songs to use to learn them. I usually recommend "Parking Lot Pickers" from Mel Bay. It has a lot of songs you probably know the melody for (which helps a lot when learning chords, at least for me) and includes the chord shapes in the back.
I'm with Mr. Morris, but only because that's what I'm familiar with. When I want to learn new tunes I find the chords I need for the tune and learn them. It's the same way I learned guitar as a kid, starting with a book that showed basic "cowboy chords" and taught tunes with them, like On Top Of Old Smokey, Oh Shenandoah, etc. After that, whatever you want to play, you learn the chords. Over the years you get quite a repertoire. So on mandolin, after a lot of trials, I learned to play the chords for Mr. Bojangles, then figured out a few others. Then came the next trick (and this is good for folk who want to play at jam sessions): Learn the chords to the fiddle tunes you already play. Like many latecomers to mandolin, I concentrated on learning to pick melodies from Mandolessons.com and elsewhere. Later, I began to use backing tracks for practicing those melodies and refining them. From there, you just have to start switching to playing rhythm (chords) along with the same backing tracks. That kind of stuff works best for me, YMMV
I'm in the same boat as everyone above; late to the mando, and realized that playing melody was only half the work (maybe less!). I started playing rhythm to backing tracks and found that a) it wasn't so easy to do and 2) that's what I wanted to be good at - I want to be a SOLID rhythm player. There are various books/CDs/DVDs/online courses, and those are good to pick up ideas, but the best is to cue up your tune of the day & play to it. Fun stuff!
Thanks for all the great comments/discussion.
