I hope I am not doing something inappropriate by posting this here, but I was unable to find this song listed in the table of contents. If I missed it, please accept my apologies. John Reischman is one of my favorite contemporary mandolin players. I can't seem to manage playing it in it's entirety without hitting a few clunkers, but I just put a new saddle and new strings on this morning, and thought I would give it a try. I used a Tascam DR-05 and my iPhone 6 for video, but actually decided to just use the audio from the iPhone, as I can't really see any big difference once it was compressed for YouTube. I guess if I was going to add any FX effects it would make sense to use the Tascam, but I just wanted to do this as a straight recording. For whatever reason, this tune just stays with me Mark
That's a great tune. Nicely played and good sound from your mandolin and iPhone. I played in a bluegrass band back in the day, and we would do this song. I love the lyrics. Over yonder stands little Maggie, with a dram glass in her hand...
Wonderful steady rhythm and light touch Mark, well done. Did you play guitar before? -I played guitar first and found that, well I still find that with the mandolin if I really love a tune before I’ve learned it, I’ll learn it a bit too fast and one or two slight errors will repeat, ingrain, and later it’s really difficult to iron them out. I’m often surprised by the quirky demands of the mandolin. Yours has great plaintif tone too.
Mark you did it beautiful! Your mandolin sounds great. The recording quality of our new smartphones with their tiny built-in micros is amazing.
Great playing and a fine recording using just what you needed, Mark. Youare so right about posting on YouTube and the compression that involves making it less of a need to have high-end recording gear, epsecially for those single track recordings where you do not need to add in backing or other layers of instruments.
Thanks guys, I really appreciate the kind words from you all. Michael - When I was learning this version from JR's album, I never associated it with Ralph Stanley's Little Maggie - lol. It wasn't until later when I was fooling around with it at a jam during a break, one of the guys started singing the lyrics - what a surprise! Simon - Guilty as charged. I have been trying to learn to play the guitar since the ripe ole age of 10, so that puts it at around 56 years or so - and being 'self learned' - I have incorporated just about every Bad Habit there is into my guitar playing. I tried to remedy this when learning the mandolin by getting pointers from established mandolinists. But old habits are hard to break
Mark, that's really fine playing and tone. JR has a tricky style to learn with all the hammer-ons and slides.
