anyone use this book-Celtic Mandolin songs

[darylcrisp]

http://www.mandolincafe.com/cgi-bin/...uery=retrieval

it sounds neat, would love to hear some reviews if anyone has used it.

thanks
daryl

[Brent Hutto]

Like all of Allan Alexander's books, it's pretty solid. Generally he aims at the range from slightly beyond total beginner level to maybe a couple of levels beyond that. Very few super-challenging finger busters in terms of chords or extensive double-stops. Sticks mostly to melody lines with (often) second, separate accompaniment parts to provide harmony. Tab and notation. But he does use a variety of keys and meters.

It's well laid out and typeset with particular attention to avoiding awkward page turns (Allan hates page turns) and the tunes are given thoughtful settings and ample variations. If you like those type of tunes and aren't looking for virtuoso-level showpieces I very highly recommend the Celtic book as well as his Balkan, South American and Christmas collections.

[demotlj]

I have almost all of Alexander's books for mandolin and I would add that this book is a little more difficult than some because he uses the higher positions and most of the pieces are at a faster pace than his other books. (I know that's not a very helpful comment if you don't have his other books.) Brent's review is quite accurate -- you would play these pieces with the CD or someone else on accompaniment because the mandolin provides the melody line. Nevertheless, the pieces are nice, the melody line and Allan's variations are interesting, and the pieces challenging enough to keep you working at perfecting it.

[Jill McAuley]

From what I've heard about this book it approaches Celtic music with a slight "classical" bias, so not from a truly trad stance. If you're interested in a good introduction to playing irish/celtic styles on the mandolin the Mel Bay book "School of the Mandolin: Irish Mandolin" by Mike Gregory and Joe Carr is a good place to start - comes with a CD too.

http://www.melbay.com/product.asp?ProductID=21546BCD

Cheers,
Jill

[darylcrisp]

thanks everybody, very helpful
daryl

[Brent Hutto]

All of Allan Alexander's books have arrangements with a certain feel to them. It's kinda-sorta classical I suppose given that is Allan's background (classical guitar). But mostly he tries to keep it very simple and unornamented with the stated goal of setting the tunes out in a way that is fun and not too difficult to play while sounding and nice as possible.

Kind of the opposite of what ITM and similar styles are going for which is maximum ornamentation and with some difficulty in the playing being a desirable side effect. Or so it seems to me...

But definitely not the book you want to use to prep for showing up at a high-octane session.

P.S. While I'm being the tiniest bit, if not "tongue in cheek" then at least "cheeky" let me speculate what a legitimate trad tune book would be like. I guess it would have no variations, just a single form of the A and B (and maybe C or D) sections, with a repeat bar at the end of each. There would be about 650 tunes in the book, each marked with quarter note equals 220 or thereabouts. Do I have it somewhere in the ballpark?