Originally Posted by billhay4 Anyone know what that mandolin he's playing is? Looks like a Monteleone to me. Bill Its a dearstone.
O Brother. No, no, it's not me moaning about something I read on the forum. Surely we all know it's the tenth anniversary of the release of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Cause for celebration! All hail! Time to remember this moment in music history, the bluegrass and traditional organizations and acoustic web sites rise up to... Knock, knock. Anyone home? Hey, does anyone ...
I cannot remember the last time I posted to my blog. Life got very complicated in mid-July only a few weeks after starting a new job. Then teaching at Columbia College (Sonora CA) started in late August. Suffice to say the second half of the year has skipped by without my being able to play much music or stop and reflect --in text-- on events in my personal life. But here we are near the end of the year, and I have resolved to play more music and write more. Here is the first installment ...
Despite the pressures of work, I am keeping my discipline and am practicing at least an hour at least 5 days a week! I am really pleased that my fingering is so much lighter, because that helps to play faster, cleaner. But what I am working on most is relaxed, good tone. And chords, what I have been skipping to date. Now seems to be a good time to work on them. How I am breaking down an hour to ensure I get a full workout: Aonzo scale exercise, at 90, 115, ...
Back from vacation, and a few outstanding questions have been answered. One, it takes only two practice sessions until you can noticeably tell the callouses are rebuilding. Two, going from 85F to 0F can depress your immune system (*cough*). My last blog entry provoked more response than any other, centering around this comment: The biggest problem I have had before is that my background is not from bluegrass, and learning a new genre of music when learning an instrument is ...
The past few years have been difficult for various personal reasons, and this year has been a bit of a tipping point for me. It just got so that playing the mandolin brought no joy--or seemed too much of an effort to bother. So, I went on a hiatus for a while, and knowing that exercise helps mild depressions, I placed some focus there for a while. After some minor surgery on my wrist (mentioned in the forums) I started reading the forums again, and listening to the mandolin music ...
iPhone owner? There's a new way to connect to the Mandolin Cafe thanks to mandolin player and ace programmer Steve Smith who makes his home in Florida. Meet v1 of the Mandolin Cafe iPhone App, available for free from the Apple App Store, developed by Steve as his first steps into programming for the iPhone. We think he did a terrific job. What's in it? For starters there's a mandolin chord finder, a simple hook into the MP3 of the Day, a search ...
When I think about it, a lot of my life has been dedicated to being an effective old guy. Learn to play mandolin, learn to fly fish, learn to smoke cigars, learn to drink bourbon, learn to tell good stories, learn to talk with people and make them feel welcome, learn how much nonsense to tolerate and how to handle things when the limit has been exceeded, all the stuff you expect a person who has been around to know how to do. And I started early. I mean do the math. If you want to ...
Awhile back we asked Colorado Case Company to digitize a Mandolin Cafe case sticker for embroidery onto one of their case covers we were purchasing, and it arrived today. Alas, as things go, when we asked them about this we had a nifty old case to put it on, but sold it recently. ... and of course you know what that means. We'll just have to find an old 23 snakehead plus period case to put this thing on. What's a fella to do, otherwise? ...
So this week the jam was at my house. Our normal venue, where we have our jam on stage, and where we don’t charge them a dime, our normal venue every now and then thinks they can do better. So every other month or so they book a rock band to play on our jam night and tell us to git. Anyway, on those evenings the jam meets at my house. Tonight we had four fiddles, three mandolins, two guitars, and a flute. Oh and the piano. We played lots of tunes that featured arpeggios in the B part, ...
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