# Music by Genre > Celtic, U.K., Nordic, Quebecois, European Folk >  Irish and Scottish Mando Music For a Beginner

## Chris Keth

I have a mandolin coming from a forum member and I'm dying to dig in. I've been a guitar player for a long time so many of those skills cross over. Can anyone suggest some fun tunes that a beginner with a mandolin can tackle? There are just so many jigs, reels, and hornpipes that I don't know where to start.

Additionally, does anyone know of any online resources that I can work through to learn some of the more common traits of this type of music like common progressions, etc?

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## Youda

If you go to the home page of this website, off to the left, click the links for chords/tablature and lessons.  Lots of exercises, double stops, chords, etc., and also in the tablatures, there should be enough good Irish and Scottish tunes to keep anyone happy for awhile.   Have fun!  And welcome to mandolin playing!   :Smile:

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## Chris Keth

> If you go to the home page of this website, off to the left, click the links for chords/tablature and lessons.  Lots of exercises, double stops, chords, etc., and also in the tablatures, there should be enough good Irish and Scottish tunes to keep anyone happy for awhile.   Have fun!  And welcome to mandolin playing!


Any that are really common and shouldn't be overlooked, or any that are easy and good to start with?

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## Martin Jonas

The site you want is Nigel Gatherer's page here.  It has an excellent selection of common (and some uncommon) tunes in a range of difficulties, in both standard notation and mandolin tab, as well as a brief but good beginner's tutorial for the first steps.

By the way, it's probably a good idea not to think of Irish and Scottish music in terms of chord progressions: it's a melody-based genre and the tunes can suffer from overly-rigid chording (to the extent that some hardcore traditionalists ban guitars altogether from their sessions).

Martin

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## Ed Fowler

PanaDP

I've been playing with a session for a while now. There are a couple tunes that I'd suggest you start with.

Hector the Hero: 

http://www.nigelgatherer.com/tunes/std/std1/hecth.html

The Rakes of Mallow: 

http://www.nigelgatherer.com/whistle/tut_6/6-3.html

They are nice tunes. Easy to play. Have a go.

Ed

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## Chris Keth

Ed, Martin, and Youda: thank you! I think that will get my fingers and my head off to a good start.

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## Jill McAuley

Check out Aidan Crossey's website - www.paythereckoning.com  There's some great mp3's of Irish and Scottish tunes there.

www.thesession.org is a good resource for tunes - you can get the ABC's/notation for just about any tune you're looking for there.

Also worth a look is www.mandolinsessions.com , there's also a new book out "School of Mandolin: Irish Mandolin" by Joe Carr and Michael Gregory, who both write for the Mandolin Sessions site.

Two good, easy jigs to start with, that can be played together as a set, are The Carraroe/Portroe (this one is also known as Out on the Ocean)

Cheers,
Jill

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## Roland Sturm

Check out this site
http://web.me.com/kathleenbawn/SFLA_...ore_Tunes.html
which has sheet music (with chords) and audio files (recorded on mandolin) for very common Scottish session tunes.  Moreover, for somebody in the Los Angeles area, those are the tunes that get played at the CTMS celtic session (3rd Sunday in Encino, next one April 19), so not only are those great tunes, they'll also get you jump started playing in sessions. http://www.ctmsfolkmusic.org/

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## Mike Snyder

I'm real fond of the jukebox feature on the Banjohangout. Lots of cool stuff in Old Time and Bluegrass. You'll have to weed out the clunkers.

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## Chris Keth

Thanks for the additional suggestions. I've started working on "The Lilting Banshee" on the mandolin sessions site. I think I'll give the two a go next you suggested, Jill.

Roland, I'm not sure I'm ready to play out with anyone but I'd love to come out  and have a listen if I'm in town the 3rd Sunday of this month.

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