Search:

I like this music!

I just started restringing my mandolin, which has an old-style stamped tailpiece. I got partway through before I realized that I hadn't used the sideways tines for the right-angle turn on the treble...

Overthinking is the downfall of successful improvising, in my view. What works for me is to start with a rhythmic pattern that I can play easily. Then "populate it with notes". This advice, which...

After I remove my Snark from the mandolin peghead, or leave the iPhone tuner app, I like to marginally tweak my tuning until I think it sounds best. Right or wrong, I'm using the tuner as a guide...

Just to muddy the waters: a google search for "best strings for Gibson A-Jr" finds several older threads on MC where highly experienced players OK, or even recommend, the use of J74s.

I'd had...

I have been making nuts - in my amateur way - for years, from this dog chew bone I got at a pet store for three bucks. Shown is the Rogue plastic nut I'll be replacing shortly. I haven't seen this...

Zip-Strip, razor blade and sandpaper produced this result from a black-painted Rogue mandolin I acquired for almost nothing. I was gonna stain it but I like the cream color, so probably will spray a...

Back in the early 1970s, when my moral and intellectual character was considerably less developed than it is today, I trusted my instincts when it came to buying instruments. Unfortunately I also...

Good Lord, what a difference!

Like night and day! Like the sun coming out of the clouds.

Put down the mouse and change your mandolin strings.

Do it right now!

Hearing loss is the great equalizer between expensive and cheap mandolins.

Thanks for the replies to my somewhat vague OP, folks. Many useful ideas in this thread, from both the "spiritual quest" and the "career tactics" angles.

The immediate impression that bluegrass music makes on me is of male vocalists singing in harmony, in high tenor range, possibly with a nasal tonality and a mid-Southern accent. It seems more a...

Never mind that "music" stuff. Why are the piano player and the fiddler wearing HATS?

Could it be because they are BALD? Shamed by society, afraid to show the reality of their appearance...
...

As I enter my twilight years, I find the unusual, wild or garish instruments much more appealing...

I saw some gray-finished mandolins a couple years ago. Nice look, kinda classy.

I like the...

No professor in the world can teach you how to entertain the h___ out of paying customers.

About 85 percent of the time, I don't think about my pick direction at all. Either UDUD or DUDU seems to just happen, I think - I mean, if I even think about it.

Sometimes when playing slow to...

The scroll and point are an efficient means of extracting hundreds of extra dollars from the mandolinist.

If possible, avoid those sadistic bebop saxophonists...

I have played guitar for 54 years, mandolin for 15 years. I've gotten pretty good, and I perform regularly for pay with some of the best musicians in my city.

I can sing a tune, but my vocals are...

The electric guitar will die when young men grow tired of making noise while pompously strutting about, wagging long objects they hold at waist level.

In other words, never.

The older I get, the less difference I feel between cheap and nice instruments.

When I'm out of practice, out of sorts, tired, I sound like s__t on any instrument.

When I'm motivated, happy,...

Thanks for the excellent info - you have figured it out admirably.

Not a mando-specific question, but -

In what form do you send your terrific demo recording to the booker of a club, coffee house, or whatever venue? I have the idea that audio CDs are outdated -...

After several years of playing and practicing mandolin, I've concluded that the A course is the most troublesome of the four. Hardest to keep in tune, hardest to play cleanly, hardest to tremelo...

I can't bring myself to spend 750 bucks on a mandolin, let alone a case.