Re: Thankful for this forum
Yes it's a great forum, has been very helpful to me too over the years.
There are many sources of online lessons, some subscription, and there are some teachers who will do 1 on 1 lessons over skype video. I started with a 1-1 teacher (Pete Martin) and he was really helpful and not that expensive. Given the benefits I would have gladly paid more to support him. His bluegrass arrangements for tunes are great too, buy his books downloadable as PDF's on his site.
Things like a bad hand position and bad picking technique can be caught immediately by a teacher who can see you play live.
Once you get past the basics (I highly recommend a live teacher for that), online subscription based lessons are more beneficial, because it's pretty important to build on a solid base of good playing technique.
There are many many sources of bluegrass video teaching material out there, I will suggest two: BanjoBenClark, and Mike Marshal at artistWorks.
There is a lot to be said for hi-res video closeups of top players demonstrating playing methods, and having seen several who use different techniques, it helped me a great deal in deciding which method I was going to follow.
I also find that the instrument is pretty important, I am still working through many playability issues that have held me back or made an instrument more difficult to play. I am thinking a summary post describing all those things might help somebody at some point, although I have been pretty vocal about each one as I have run into them.
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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