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Improvisation is different from composing. If it's not, we need a different word for 'composing'. You can revise when you compose, and you can't revise when you improvise, which leads to a reliance...

If you can play steadily with a backing track or a metronome, you can play with a band– how sure are you that you're the problem? A don't know how advanced your family is, but some beginner groups...

This is extremely common for musical instrument companies- they don't want their dealers to undercut each other and race to the bottom. If you don't sell at their price -- or at least advertise at...

Glad I'm not the only one who is always thinking of my 'instrument per hour' price when I'm playing. I've got a weird old mandola and some other oddballs that are probably still around $40 an hour or...

Interesting! I know a couple local guys that use sandpaper as their last step. Lots of way to skin a cat, though.

Yeah, but a CT 55? That's a mandolin nerd pick.

This (the second one) is the Marshall DVD that I think is very good for mandolin chords: 171083

It used to be about the price of a single mandolin lesson with an average teacher, and for me it was...

What books are you using? You can use different fingerings within shapes, the only rule is that it makes sense in context and works for your anatomy.

In the early stages, I think it's good to...

That filter you're using is making it look blue.

Man, you're spot-on about that. I'm always amazed when I go through a songbook and see all these interesting rare shapes- it's like the music version of driving twenty miles of backroads to avoid an...

Absolutely, this is a mysterious talent that seems to need a specific combination of empathy, knowledge, and generosity. Unfortunately, this isn't a prerequisite for becoming a teacher.

Yeah, I would agree they are. For a while I was playing a lot of swing on a tenor guitar and the scale length and tuning definitely forced me into certain patterns. I ended up playing out of closed...

Regarding Guido, I don't think this is quite right. Moveable Do as we think of it is something that presupposes the existence of different keys and uses Moveable Do to allow singers to sing in a...

If we're talking about reference pitches, we're necessarily talking about Fixed Do. I don't know when that happened (i.e. when it got 'fixed'), but I am surprised to read that it seems to have...

I still think it's a "weirdo" fluke of history that the pitch we use for reference isn't the Do (C) at the center of Western harmony, regardless of Hz. I assume countries that use the Roman letter...

Well, at least it's the first note of the alphabet. What kind of weirdo system chooses an A natural minor scale as its easiest-to-write scale and then has everybody start with the third mode of it?

It depends on how steeped you are in Aebersold-style "chord scale" theory, which I think has been the prevailing academic way of teaching jazz since the '80s. They have a billion scales. I had all my...

I do a lot of restrings at work, and my anecdotal evidence is that most broken strings are 1) beginner tuning accidents, 2) teenagers beating the hell out of instruments (you broke the *low* E?) or...

That's really interesting. Kind of a weird thing though... like, the guy was a concert musician (in percussion, presumably including pitched instruments like marimba) and clearly had a very good...

That's a very pretty guitar, congrats. If Waterloo made a tenor they're put that pickguard on it.

I think this was a good post. The speed question seems to come up mostly from people who want to play in genres that are so fast that you get a sense of exhilaration when you listen- gypsy jazz,...

There's a twenty minute cutscene of Kristoff in a guitar shop on the Blu-Ray. Luthier: "Oh, see, this is a classic example of wolf defense damage. Stew-Mac makes a tool just for this."

This is the main issue I've noticed. I talked to handsome and famous luthier Frank Ford about this, in reference to a teens mandola I purchased. His view at the time was that if the top hadn't...

I live in the south bay and have heard about the mandolins at Cafe Trieste but have never been in the city at the right time to hear them. I'll have to make a point of going soon. It's funny how the...

"I want people to hear me play. More people, I mean.

I'm playing in a couple groups, and that's good. So what else can I do? What have I to offer to the world that is different, that makes people...