Re: "Catching" both strings in a course while picking
It's a fundamental of mandolin playing that your stroke has to be grooved to where it hits both strings every time without fail (except in certain advanced techniques where you play one string for a special effect). According to my mandolin teacher it's something that almost every beginner does not do consistently when they first start out. I was no exception myself, although I was probably hitting on all my downstrokes at least.
For me it didn't happen until I loosened up my wrist in order to let the pick naturally rotate slightly to a different angle on the up and down strokes. Not tilting it on purpose, it was just a side effect of a natural wrist motion once I quit holding it so stiffly that the pick was locked into an exaggerated downward tilt all the time.
For you it might be something totally different. I spent 5 minutes a couple times a day for two or three weeks just playing down, up, down, up, down, up real slowly and watching myself in the mirror to make sure my wrist was staying loose. After a while I could feel when it was tensing up again and also hear when I was missing one or the other string.
I'd also suggest if you can't hear the difference between hitting one string and hitting both strings you might be a little tentative with your stroke either way. But that's just a speculation as I definitely know nothing about how to teach somebody to play the mandolin...
P.S. FWIW, I watched my buddy Lou do pretty much the same thing as me when he started out a few months after me. He worked it out after a while but he started with exactly that same downward tilt and stiff wrist. Hope he didn't get infected with that from watching me!
The first man who whistled
thought he had a wren in his mouth.
He went around all day
with his lips puckered,
afraid to swallow.
--"The First" by Wendell Berry
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