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Hey y'all,

I've been wanting to make a few videos that highlight techniques I work on in the practice room and with my students. The idea is to cover concepts that I hope pickers will find...

All the answer you need.

Back when I was 20, after 7 years of religiously studying the art, I received my Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do. One day our Master Instructor told us that all we needed to learn we had been shown in our...

I’m not sure where I was first exposed to this; it may have been here on the Café. The original context is storytelling and the creative process. But it applies quite well to folks starting out on...

Hi!

So, I'm giving away my first (slightly abridged) mandolin ebook on my website.

It's mostly aimed at beginners but covers a number of different genres, ideas and techniques to keep things...

I was once told that practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. With enough practice you can learn to do something perfectly wrong.

I would venture to say that correct guidance and...

I have been having 'one of those days' since I picked up my first instrument in 1978 . . . .

Anyone else going to the tenor guitar gathering in Astoria, Oregon tomorrow, June 8th? I’ll be there about 10 am, and will be in Gerry Carthy’s Irish trad class at one. I’ll be bringing one of my...

Great story. I have a similar one. Several actually. About 5 years ago, a new restaurant called Mediterraneo opened in our town. My wife had eaten there a couple of times and one evening ordered from...

Keep working with it. You need to get to the point that you're not thinking so much about it, instead you're just synchronizing your actions in time with it.
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I did think of one suggestion that...

I'm a plectrumer.:))

I'm no expert on the subject, but my first question would be: what are you feeling when you play? I sing many folk songs, and sometimes find that I do better if I remember to take a few seconds and...

When you beat your foot, play to your foot like a metronome. I watch too many people beat their foot to the music and change tempo's like crazy. Your foot is the downbeat of the conductor, when it...

Hey Drew! IMO, good timing is one of the big necessities for a musician - and I’d tend to disagree that playing in time makes a musician sound robotic. Playing robotically makes a musician sound...

Local venue? Norfolk, Virginia?

Perhaps it could be a geographical anomaly? Some line-ups may be geographically based ... for instance, I heard that if you're gonna play in Texas, you gotta have...

My only requirement for music is that I enjoy it. Don't get your blood pressure up over labels. Either enjoy the music or choose not to listen.

I did click the link and I did read the article. I also clicked on the videos within the link.

It's probably my fault rather than the fault of the article, but I'm not sure I understand the point...

:popcorn:

Who declared him an expert in a month? Himself? I know guitar players who talk of bluegrass being so simple that they became BGguitarist in a short time but they were a legend in their own mind.

Well, we all have slightly different ways of best learning music. Some learn best by hearing a melody over and over, some by reading it off a page, some by remembering the physical motions used to...

Regarding Molly Tuttle, Joe K. Walsh, et. al. as "a very good example of the evolution of the music, probably geared toward a more 'listenable' vein than some others as far as I’m concerned"

The...

I've always felt that the way music is continually changing is one of the very best things about it. Just look at all the ways that Appalachian musicians deconstructed their own Irish and Scottish...

Harmonica!

I'd be careful of "resting fingers above the correct scale and chord positions" -- what did your doctor (and I would presume a physical therapist also) have to say about doing anything with your left...

This! (as I believe Tom's generation say).

There is an important place for those who fell in love with a particular musical tradition and work to keep it alive, but it's inevitably a minority and...