Recommended Beginner Resources

[Tim Gillane]

Simon Mayor's "The Mandolin Tutor" was the book with which I learned to play the mandolin a decade or so ago, with no prior musical experience and no teacher. Obviously this means I'm biased towards it, but I can vouch from personal experience that it's a great book and that it is possible to teach yourself mandolin with it. The pieces are from a range of different styles, mostly Celtic but with some classical and others thrown in, and it comes with a CD. One thing I would say is that it concentrates on melody playing and there is very little on chording or accompaniment, but the writing is very clear, the examples are interesting and accessible and it advances at just the right speed for the motivated absolute beginner. For the very first steps, I also found Nigel Gatherer's web site tutorial here very useful.

Martin

Did you use the Simon Mayor book with or without the CD?