Ginny wrote: "JESS - do you have a YouTube channel where we can hear you?"
Hm. I believe you've already heard my playing and didn't like it. But anyway, my public YouTube videos are here, mixed in with my sheetmusic and tech videos (you can tell by the thumbnail/icon if it's an actual instrument being played). There are also some other, 'unlisted', videos I've posted on MandolinCafe pages over the years, available via those pages but not on my main public YouTube page.
Ginny wrote: "I see you are getting a new mandolin, that is exciting."
Well, "dread" might be a more appropriate word than "exciting", as I'm concerned as to just exactly how low-quality it will be. But, that's half the challenge of being a musician, to coax awful instruments into producing some sort of quasi-acceptable sound. (Many years ago I had excellent instruments, but I'm not in that phase now.) I'm assuming it will need a fair dose of reverb and turning down the treble, to compensate for the usual condenser-mic recording issues with cheap thin tinny shrill plywood mandolins. It's all I can afford, so it will have to do, might (or might not) be better than none at all. I don't have a fret file so I hope the frets aren't too far out, the last ultra-cheap instrument I bought (banjo) had dreadful fretwork with some of the frets sticking up higher than the others, unplayable without major work. As to the mandolin, a further concern with cheap instruments is inadequate packaging - I hope it arrives in one piece and not irrevocably damaged from bouncing around in the delivery truck and likely being thrown about when transferred from one truck to another. They've delayed it by another 2 days, so now it's scheduled for Wednesday, and I probably won't get into town until late Thursday to pick it up.
Anyway, I didn't want to detract from the thread with too much off-topic stuff, but on the other hand I didn't want to not answer the question I'd been asked.