FREE: Hundreds of Hours of Mel Bay Audio

[BradKlein]

I have been following the excellent thread on Joe Carr's recent Monroe book for Mel Bay (http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?77346-Play-Like-A-Legend-Bill-Monroe-Tunes-amp-Songs-for-Mandolin), which led me to the Mel Bay site (http://www.melbay.com/) to purchase the e-book version. Perhaps this is old news to folks here, but I had not realized that the company has placed the audio components of hundreds of its books (almost all of their e-books) on line for free download!

This is a tremendous resource that gives you a feel for the material covered in each book, helps you evaluate purchasing decisions, and for those who learn by ear, provides a huge library of simplified versions of songs and tunes for different instruments and abilities.

To give just one example, find all the mandolin books and organize by 'format', here (http://www.melbay.com/results.asp?Category=M01%2CB32%2CB29&heading=Mandolin+%28All%29&head1=&sub1=&sub=1&catID=111&Head2=Mandolin&mode=browse&discontinued=no). Then choose an e-book, like "Steve Kaufman's Favorite 50 Mandolin, Tunes A-F eBook/CD Set". Click the tab 'downloads' which takes you to this page (http://www.melbay.com/download.asp?ProductID=20890BCDEB), where a button labeled 'download extras' gives you MP3s of simple arrangements of 56 fiddle tunes.

If that floats your boat, by all means BUY THE BOOK in e-book version or in print! What a treasure trove Mel Bay has made available to the public!

[Clement Barrera-Ng]

Wow this is news to me. Really appreciate it for sharing this. I went over to the site and looked through a number of the selections in the list. It looks like the downloads are limited to only eBooks format publications (makes sense), and not all eBooks have them either. But nonetheless this is great stuff. In fact, just downloaded a few that I've been meaning to check out, including a number of recent titles that had been advertised here on the cafe: Play like a legend, Non-Jazz improv and Marilynn Mair's Choro book.

thanks again!

[Clement Barrera-Ng]

BTW listening to Marilynn Mair's playing from the Complete Mandolist book (which I own) at work right now and it is just pure heaven ...

[BradKlein]

Thanks for pointing out The Complete Mandolinist download [here (http://www.melbay.com/download.asp?ProductID=21156BCDEB)]. What lovely playing! It's a Mel Bay book I'd have never given a second glance to, but what a nice audio download and it ends with such a nice recording of Vivaldi's Mandolin Concerto.

[Fstpicker]

Thank you so much! Some great resources to have.

Jeff

[Ron McMillan]

Thanks for the pointer to a great resource, Brad. And hats off to Mel Bay for having the marketing foresight to understand how 'giving things away' can surely be good for business. Within a few minutes' browsing the page of books available, I had downloaded the extras attached to the eBook School of Mandolin Blues by Joe Carr, listened to a few of the mp3s - and now I will definitely download the paid-for full version of a book that I previously didn't know existed.

ron