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I struggle with finding an effective practice routine, too. Part of my problem is that I lack a certain musical self-awareness. When I'm struggling with a particular song or exercise, it can be...

The frets.com tutorial is great; it's what I've always used.

Yes, changing mandolin strings is annoying. It feels a little bit like wrestling with a spiny octopus sometimes. But there is also...

It doesn't seem to be the angle most people in this thread take, but this is where I find having a budget to be helpful. A budget is not just about deciding what you can't buy; it's about having the...

Thank you all for this rather lovely conversation. I learned a lot, and it was rather satisfying to see the end result. Great work, Brad! Thanks for putting yourself out there.

One question from a...

Since we've strayed from only recommending books in the bluegrass/folk music tradition, I'll throw in a couple of books I've enjoyed recently:

An interesting read on the Bach Cello Suites, which...

Thile teaches "The Swallowtail jig" on his instructional DVD with a DUD DUD pattern. He emphasizes the pick pattern and the rhythmic feel it creates pretty strongly, so it was at least a part of his...

I think this depends a lot on your goals. If you are trying to get a particular song up to speed, I imagine there's not a lot of need to play more slowly than you can play correctly. But I find that...

I'm not well connected to the session scene (i.e. I usually play alone), but I think that the JM11 strings on my mandolin sound great when playing Irish tunes. They will give a bit of a different...

Thanks for all the encouragement. It appears Big Muddy is closed until the third week in June (hopefully for a well-deserved vacation!), so I'll have to wait a little while to get a new bridge. I'm...

I've been wanting to try flatwound strings on my Mid-Missouri M-4 for quite sometime, and I finally got a set of the Jazzmando JM-11s to try out. I was super stoked when they arrived in the mail...

You can find a lot of standard notation for classical music at the Werner Icking Music Archive.

(Thanks to other members of the Café for pointing me to this great resource.)

The third cello...

I realized I forgot to answer your question about scales.

The best way to learn open position scales is to learn the theory behind them. Then you're not stuck memorizing a bunch of patterns...

As a fellow beginner (I got my mandolin in July), I have a couple of points of advice:

1) No matter what anyone says about what kind of material you should practice, be sure to find something you...

Add me to the chorus of voices that loves the style of that mandolin. I can't wait until I've played the instrument long enough that I know what I would want in a custom model so I can get someone...

My guitar feels huge when I pick it up now, too! As the first quality instrument I owned, I'm still in love with it even though I don't play it as much as it deserves, so I haven't thought about...

I didn't even finish what I was writing, and I already have to add a me too on Daniel's comment about versatility!

I'm eager to see what answers others have to give, but in the meantime I'll add my two cents.

Reasons I like the mandolin:
1) The sound. If I didn't #like the way it sounded, nothing else would...

It's great to see the different approaches that people take to playing. I've been playing with all the suggestions in this thread, and I have a few observations. Note that most of these observations...

Thanks for your replies.

I was really quite startled to find this chord shape so early in a beginner's book with no "by the way, this might be really hard if you have normal sized fingers"...

So after having my mandolin for a few weeks, I picked up a copy of the Greg Horne Beginning Mandolin book. I was having lots of fun noodling around, but I really want to get to the point where I feel...

On OS X, you may need Flip4Mac or Windows Media Player:

Available here

Mitch - glad you found one you liked. I imagine we'll both enjoy our Mid-Mos for quite some time!

I'm so excited that I have to share it with the world: my first mandolin arrived at my home on Friday. It's a Mid-Missouri M-4 that I got from Bruce Snider through the Mandolin Cafe classifieds....

Has anyone here tried the blue snowball mic? It looks interesting - it plugs directly into the computer via usb, but is supposed to offer pretty high quality. It seems like one of the less expensive...

While searching for my first mandolin, I found a relatively local music store that had a variety of styles in stock. While I liked the tone of many of the mandolins (especially when played by someone...