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Mandolin Cafe Blog

Official blog of the Mandolin Cafe

  1. Three Ways our Forum Allows You to Share Your Music

    Our Forum software has great tools we've developed to help you share your music. You can talk all you want about music, but sharing sound files takes it another step! For the purposes of this article we're just going to concentrate on MP3s with a quick tutorial on adding SoundCloud clips.

    Upload MP3s to our Forum space

    Go into Advanced Posting Mode just like you're making a post, select the Paper Clip icon then select and upload your MP3 from your computer desktop which ...

    Updated Jun-21-2015 at 5:18pm by Scott Tichenor

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    Mandolin Cafe Site Information
  2. Two essential fake books for swing & jazz players

    If the time has come where you've progressed to the point where you'd like to step into the world of Major 6ths, 7ths, diminished chords and beyond, there are two essential fake books that have made appearances at various times on this Forum I thought worth parking here in a little more visible spot.

    Both are free, and they're well done.

    A fake book for those of you who might be unfamiliar is a very basic sketch of a tune. Chords and a lead line in standard notation. ...
  3. Isn't it Time You Listened to Bach on Mandolin?

    The music of the "old master" as some affectionately refer to him - Johann Sebastian Bach - has received a lot of well deserved attention of late from the mandolin world. Sure, we've played and recorded his music for years, but it's hard to ignore three important Bach projects in the past 18 months by some pretty big names. Like Thile, Marshall, Avital, Lichtenberg. I suspect many of you have not heard a note from a single one of these. Many of you have though, and a few of you probably have all ...
  4. Mike Marshall and Caterina J.S. Bach Recording

    We're privileged to be the first outside of the production team to receive any information about the new Mike Marshall and Caterina Lichtenberg J.S. Bach duo recording coming in April. This is sure to be one of the highlights of the year in what is already a very strong one for classical mandolin.

    Since there's not enough information to share via a news release we're parking what we have in our blog.

    The tracks:

    The Fifteen Two-Part Inventions
    ...
  5. 2014 In Review

    January - We started off the year with delivery of an Eastman MD515 Mandolin with Schertler pick-up to a lucky winner of a December giveaway.

    inline imageAvi Avital's recording Between Worlds released on Deutsche Grammophon.

    The brilliant English mandolinist Simon Mayor was out with a new recording, The Art Of Mandolin.

    20 lucky visitors to our web site were picked as winners in a special ...
  6. Let's Play Jeopardy! Here's your host, Alex Trebek

    Contestant #3: "I'll take Internet Forums for $200, Alex."

    Alex Trebek: "ToneRite, Blue Chip Picks and Gibson's 120th Anniversary F5 mandolin."

    Contestant #3: "Name three products garnering publicity and benefiting beyond their wildest dreams on the Mandolin Cafe forum."

    Alex Trebek: "That's correct! Please continue"

    I've been wanting to say this for a long time. It's clear strong negative opinions that keep getting voiced over and over ...

    Updated Nov-12-2014 at 6:30pm by Scott Tichenor

    Categories
    General Mandolin Comments
  7. New Packaging/SKU for D'Addario J-74 Mandolin Strings

    D'Addario has updated their iconic J-74 mandolin string packaging and SKU (stock keeping unit). While this isn't earth shattering news, in light of the fact that this is probably the most widely used mandolin set in use in the United States and possibly other countries (our opinion, not backed by any statistics) we thought it worth sharing.

    This point forward you'll see these referred to as D'Addario EJ-74 strings. Nothing else has changed according to our sources and we've reached ...

    Updated Oct-25-2014 at 12:31pm by Scott Tichenor

    Categories
    General Mandolin Comments
  8. News and comments that didn't make the Cafe home page

    Like a lot of folks, we chuckled at the Ira and Charlie Louvin Satan Is Real tribute Martin guitar at the recent Summer NAMM Show. It was predictably panned online (including our Forum) as a sorry attempt by Martin to come up with something interesting. What no one reported is that all 50 manufactured were spoken for by the end of the first day of the show. Last we checked, the objective of a business is to make things that sell. We've shown the image below to several people who said they'd love ...
  9. Summer NAMM

    As a rule I don't like to eat my own words, so excuse me while I grab fork and spoon. The Nashville NAMM Show which I'd boasted on the home page was quite the networking opportunity for mandolinists is not what it used to be. Still, there are valuable contacts made, experiences you're glad you were a part of and information that might not have been discovered otherwise. Allow me to share some of those.

    I was invited down a day before the show by Tim Nelson of Eastman. Tim's lengthy ...

    Updated Jul-23-2014 at 7:17pm by Scott Tichenor

    Categories
    General Mandolin Comments
  10. So you think you'd like to run a mandolin forum?

    This amusing exchange between someone that has apparently visited this site a few times just occurred today. For those of you that are just sure you'd like to own a big mandolin forum, what more would you like to do on a Sunday? Something like this happens more often than you'd think. User's name and email addresses have been removed to protect their anonymity.

    User: How do I change my pass word or delete my account? Can’t find it anywhere on the web site.

    Cafe: Reset ...
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