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In one of his books he distinguishes between the pull-off and push-off in the way described in another reply: for the pull-off finger goes down, for the push (push-off?) it goes up.

But he...

Metsäkukkia is a nice waltz and song.

videos:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Mets%C3%A4kukkia

sheet music:
https://musescore.com/sheetmusic?text=Mets%C3%A4kukkia
and...

For Irish music, I recommend Henrik Norbeck's website. As the work of one person, it's more curated than thesession, and has good and well regarded basic settings of a lot of tunes. He's also put...

It's probably obvious anyway, but I would say that it's better to have a systematic approach than not to, and that it matters less what the method actually is (as long as it makes some sense, of...

I really like the first one of those; i spent ages learning it from the Youtube movie. I wouldn't recommend the flying finger fretting style, though!

I vote for down stroke too, just to keep the picking consistent with DUD.

DUD DUD for me too, but I try to avoid turning tarantella into a jig. John La Barbera in his book Italian Folk Music for Mandolin and Fiddle notates them mostly as DUD DUD, but occasionally as DDU...

I really like Coffee and a Good Book: a very nice calm tune.

Did you mean to write "a chord-melody arraignment of Somewhere Over the Rainbow", rather than "arrangement"? i.e., formally charged...

I have a similar mandolin, but mine is a KM-110S. The only differences I can see from the pictures are that mine has a black headstock and no cracks on the top.

They are nice mandolins: appear...

I've taken to replying "European traditional music", which is accurate for what I play, and involves less hand-waving and country listing. And then I explain more if there are follow up questions....

There are quite a lot of arrangements on Musescore: this search shows ones with violin parts (same range as mandolin). The second one in the list looks like it might work, e.g., using the vocal line.

I've moved on since I last posted my plectrum choice, from primetone sculpted 1.5mm to clayton small teardrops in ultem. Finding the right plectrum seems to be an endless but thankfully not too...

There's something similar for Irish music at http://www.thedronenews.org/

Yes, that is the big disadvantage, esp. for nice tunes like Madabawn Chapel or some of those Paddy Fahy reels which I really like. But you can take a cue from how whistles, pipes, etc. deal with this...

I use DAEB tuning on a 47cm (18.5 inch) instrument which depending on how you look at it is either a long-scale mandola or short-scale octave mandolin, and it works really well for tunes in the usual...

There's a discussion of the same sort of thing going on at thesession right now, with some helpful pointers:
https://thesession.org/discussions/39020.

I would definitely second the suggestion...

That's an APC instrument according to the webpage.

I have an APC mandola that looks very similar and it's really good for the price soundwise and construction-quality-wise.

The only drawback...

I found Marilyn Mair's exercises helpful for this, especially this one: http://mandolinsessions.com/?p=991

I agree with some of the other posters above: in my experience, tone declines long before intonation problems appear. And that's even taking into account that it's often hard to notice that the...

This is a really interesting topic.

I've had a look around for different kinds of "mouth music" and came across this video which has all kinds:



http://www.folkstreams.net/film,173

In case it's interesting, here's a video of Martin Howley of We Banjo 3, but playing mandolin here, demonstrating variations on Dinny O' Briens.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD-61uAuYRo

In Irish and Scottish music there is lilting (called puirt à beul in Scottish Gaelic), which is a kind of mouth music based on either wordless sounds made by the mouth or on nonsense words.
...

I got mine from stringsdirect, which is in the UK, so will most likely ship to Ireland.

Just realized I hadn't followed through with this point, so:

That's where it's different from touch-typing: a closer analogy is not looking at both the keys you're typing and the text you're...

Just to clarify: I don't think anyone's being prescriptive about this. In my view, where one looks is just part of one's own approach to playing; looking away from the left hand/fretboard is not a...