I just got Niles Hokkanen’s Bluegrass Up The Neck book. So far, I’m only working the first “Preliminary Exercises,” but I can already tell this will open up a whole new world for me. Speaking of a whole new world, I’m finding that the most difficult part of this isn’t playing the licks/chord positions starting at different parts of the neck, but making the eye/finger/ear connections with the written notation. Reading notation is natural for me at the bottom of the neck in first position, but now, moving up the neck, it almost feels like I’m starting from scratch to learn how to read notation. My question is if this is something worth concentrating on. Do people generally use notation when playing in chord positions up the neck, or do you just know where all the notes are on the fretboard so you know where all the root reference positions lie, and then just let the rest of the fingers fall into place? I should say that I mostly play old-time music, and don’t generally rely on written notation anyway (but am interested in getting into bluegrass mandolin). I can also use tab, but coming from a fiddle (i.e., fretless mandolin) background, don’t usually use tab much.
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