Are you improving? Talk about humps, plateus, and breakthroughs.
I was thinking this was a really big year for me on mandolin. A lot has happened in a good way.
My last hump was when I got bored and disheartened with my limited bluegrass repertoire, none of which I could play fast enough for the local jam at 90 bpm.
The rescue was switching to focus on gospel and classical music. I still play through the bluegrass stuff, and the BG BPM still keeps improving. Surprising that switching genres and focusing on a lot of slow accurate playing somehow helped the speed a lot.
I've had three breakthroughs in the last year (I am nearing the end of my 3rd year as a mandolin player):
- I love classical and Gospel, adding those to my practice got me to practice a lot more. Caterina Lichtenberg at ArtistWorks is simply fantastic.
- I got to where I could pull tone from an instrument and control it, that opened the door to classical music, and to sometimes actually enjoying hearing what I play. I used to feel like a honkytonk player piano, just mechanically picking notes, there was little joy in that.
- taller frets and lower action significantly reduced the fight with the instrument. A guitar player friend inspired me there, he said his past plateaus were almost always the instrument holding him back.
Davey Stuart tenor guitar (based on his 18" mandola design).
Eastman MD-604SB with Grover 309 tuners.
Eastwood 4 string electric mandostang, 2x Airline e-mandola (4-string) one strung as an e-OM.
DSP's: Helix HX Stomp, various Zooms.
Amps: THR-10, Sony XB-20.
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