A Few urgent questions

[Pasha Alden]

Hi all

A few queries. During our arts festival ending today, I purchased a CD of Hose Filiciano. Lovely music. Though he is essentially a vocalist and guitar player he has inspired me to really work on what I call embellishment playing. So my query:
How can I improve my playing of double stops?
How can I improve embellishment, e.g. playing notes between chords, that is, chords joined with single notes or double stops? I really want to do this. It seems to fill out one's playing.
Can I do this through the two finger chords or three or four finger chords I know? or do I need to play more arpeggios or parts of these in between full chords?

I hope this makes sense.

[Mike Bunting]

Jose Feliciano. Why not listen to some recordings where the mandolin is doing stuff like that and then try to imitate it. It will come with practice.

[Hany Hayek]

After playing for more than 2 years now, I realized I was playing the mandolin as if it was a violin. I am still not using chords and rarely do double stops. (Still I can play Bach Cello suite 1 - prelude - allemande and courante + Vivaldi violin concerto A minor and the mandolin concerto in C major first movement)
All my studying was based on Munier's books. Although I find it a perfect source. It may be too conventional, but very appealing to me as it kept me close to the violin methods I used to learn. In his Schuola del mandolin second book, second part is about embellishments and double stops.
I don't know how advanced you are in Chord playing (I am just begining), I found some starter exercises in the Bickford method first part for chords.
And Pettine is a good source to playing double stops and chords, although the book is designed to play unaccompanied mandolin.

[JeffD]

A violin book, or violin teacher for that matter, can get you going on double stops. Also, there is an excellent primer on double stops written by the cafe's own Pickloser.

[Ryk Loske]

Pasha,

I'd recommend Don Julin's two "Dummies" books. (Plus the "Pickloser" offering mentioned above.) Don's books seem designed to cover as broad an area of music for the mandolin as possible. Your wanting to blend styles while enhancing what you already are doing would be well served by Don's books and his videos on YouTube.

If you begin to get charmed by those more jazzy chord sounds doing Don's stuff ... you could follow that up with Don Stiernberg's Jazz Mandolin appetizers.

For ease of use on a music stand ... i take them to an Office Max or Staples and have them coil bound. There must be a similar store in South Africa.

Have fun,

Ryk

[Mandobart]

My pre-mando musical background was violin and guitar. I approached learning mandolin more as a guitar than a fiddle, which led me to learning chords right away. I incorporate a lot of embellishment by playing out of the chord position; meaning some hammer-ons, walk downs or walkups, cross picking, slides from one chord to another, etc. Not much of this sounds like Jose F., however. My advice would be to learn the chord progressions in the songs you play and try some of the above. More importantly, I think it is vital to immerse yourself in the genre or playing style you are trying to learn. That's how adults successfully learn a foreign language, by immersion. Learning a new musical style should be the same.

For me that style is Gypsy Jazz, so I have loaded up my iPod, Pandora and spotify with John Jorgensen, Pearl Django, Hot Club Sandwich, Harmonious Wail and of course David Grisman's Quintet. Spend your non-playing time listening to Jose Feliciano and other latin musicians

[Marty Jacobson]

All good advice here.

Another way to go about it is to take a melody you already know. Learn the melody well, and the chord progression separately. Think about it almost like learning the left and right hand parts of a piano piece. Then put them together. Instead of playing one note at a time, try to play the whole chord whenever possible. If you can get in the habit of being aware of where the melody fits inside the chord structure, you can much more easily start to add embellishment.
If you do this with a few songs, it will become second nature.

Blues guitarists and Doc Watson take full advantage of this kind of thinking, and it can be very powerful.

Watch Doc's fingers... a whole lot of notes with very little hand movement. He basically puts down the fingers for a chord, and then moves one finger at a time to get the melody within each chord shape.

[jmp]

Start with playing major and minor 6ths double stops. They are easy.Harmonize some of your favorite simple melodies with major and minor 6ths. Learn how to play them up/down the major scale. The rest will follow. After this you can work on adding more notes to your harmonies.

[Pasha Alden]

Hi all

I have done double stops with open strings, but have somehow lacked confidence with them. Chords are generally little trouble. I guess my chord progression is coming along, but I need a tad more of the practice on that.
I am going to do as I'm advised. Hopefully my chord playing can progress further than it already has and my melody in those chord shapes. Hopefully I can enrich my playing in these posts.

Thanks again to all.
At Mike: good mandolin music is hard to find in my neck of the woods, I have the odd piece of music provided by mandolin players here, but I hope to find more music with such good examples. HF was an example and part of the inspiration to really work at chord progression and single notes or part of melodies between chords.

[Ryk Loske]

...... good mandolin music is hard to find in my neck of the woods, I have the odd piece of music provided by mandolin players here, but I hope to find more music with such good examples. HF was an example and part of the inspiration to really work at chord progression and single notes or part of melodies between chords.

Pasha .... this may actually provide an advantage for you. With nothing to "model" your playing after you're free to listen to other instruments and let YOUR music evolve through the mandolin.

Enjoy!

Ryk

[tinsmith]

I guess I always called them dyads, so if you think of it as a partial chord, maybe that would help....

[Pasha Alden]

Thanks for the encouraging words Ryk


The guitar music is beautiful. So I shall try a little of all. Violin books can also help, but what I am looking for is to get a grip on those in-between notes, someone below sensibly called them half of part chords. Now that I am on leave I have a week to really practice different aspects of my playing.

Happy playing

Pasha Alden

[Pasha Alden]

Thanks Tinsmith. That description is better than "embellishment".

[bart mcneil]

I think it is all a matter of style which you chose. If you want to use a bunch of full four string chords it is your choice. But in certain styles of play historically players tended to use single string or double stops almost exclusively, seldom if ever going to full four string chords. Of course ornamentation of some sort was used but it seldom was based on full chord playing. I am referring to historic and often modern blues on the mando which tends to use a spare fairly un-decorated style of playing, virtually always with a plectrum.

The mando relates to the fiddle in that many of its traditions seem to come from fiddle playing with an emphasis on the double stop as a chord. And of course the tremolo to extend notes and sometimes double stop tremolo.
.

[Pasha Alden]

Many thanks Bart.

[Ivan Kelsall]

I agree with Ryk totally. The very fact that you seem to have an i dea re.the way you want to improve your playing means (to me), that you can possibly 'hear in your head' what changes you want to make in your playing. Go with it.
Practice those things that you can 'hear' - that's the way i do it & it becomes easier the more that you do it. I can play a lot of stuff i've learned 'by ear' from records,but i still feel that sometimes a bit more 'Monroefication' would sound good,so i'll go back & add a bit more tremolo & a well know Monroe style lick or two to get it done. It takes practice & it needs an effort not to 'overdo it' or it'll sound like a pastiche of 'Monroeisms'. As Ryk says,work on your own style & work on playing what you ''hear in your head'' - it's all good fun,
Ivan

[Pasha Alden]

Many thanks Ivan - going to follow your advice and I appreciate the encouragement.

Happy picking

PashaAlden

[bayAreaDude]

Hi all

I have done double stops with open strings, but have somehow lacked confidence with them. Chords are generally little trouble. I guess my chord progression is coming along, but I need a tad more of the practice on that.
I am going to do as I'm advised. Hopefully my chord playing can progress further than it already has and my melody in those chord shapes. Hopefully I can enrich my playing in these posts.

Thanks again to all.
At Mike: good mandolin music is hard to find in my neck of the woods, I have the odd piece of music provided by mandolin players here, but I hope to find more music with such good examples. HF was an example and part of the inspiration to really work at chord progression and single notes or part of melodies between chords.

Hm, if you have little trouble with chords, just drop a note or two and you have a double stop of some kind that will sound good. Might be an easy way to get into it with more confidence without worrying about constructing various double stops specifically.

[Pasha Alden]

Thanks Bayareadude

That is also a good tip. I have had two hour practice session yesterday. Am going to continue building my confidence with double stops.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Pasha - I don't know what books etc.you might be using,but a long while back a very kind member of the Cafe sent me this PDF file
of chords,double stops etc. I've up-loaded it on here a few times for others so here goes :-
Ivan


Double left click on it,& select 'save' to your PC & the very best of luck

[Pasha Alden]

Many thanks Ivan. Going to keep the book at hand. I use "Mandolin for Dummies" I was just perhaps not confident enough. I love the book by Don Julin, but any book with chords or double stops is useful.

Thanks a million for assisting.