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Anyone keeping a practice journal? I’m considering starting one to help give some focus/intentionality to my practice, keep my repertoire in good shape, and capture learnings and ideas. Curious about...

I wonder if the reason there aren’t many posts is because there are just so, so many instructors available online. Name your mandolin player, and there is a good chance they are doing lessons online....

You need the audio interface, microphone, and headphones to use Jam Kazam. No way around it. I spent a bit less than $200 and was able to just plug and play on a Mac. Windows is more fiddly according...

What did folks make of the content? I missed the first class but might drop in the others.

I’m coming up on 5 years of playing, and most all of my instruction has been via video. Sharon Gilchrist’s courses have been great resources, and Chad Manning’s PegHead course on music theory is...

I love Banjo Ben’s arrangements; learning them has really pushed me. But the tabs scroll along the bottom of the video, which I wouldn’t be able to read on an iPhone.

I started 4 years ago with the beginner mandolin course on Peghead and I am very glad I did. There are other great online resources, but many of them are a la carte versus a course. Sharon’s beginner...

I really like Sharon Gilchrist’s courses on PegHead Nation...it’s good to have a curriculum to move through. She gives lots of technical tips as she is teaching songs, and explains the music theory...

I bought a $40 slightly padded tennis racket bag for my travel mando. I fly almost every week for work. Sometimes I put some clothes in there with it, sometimes I put a tennis racket in as well. I...

Take it! There are recent threads on this site that pretty definitively answered the question of whether you can carry your mando on. The answer is yes. In fact several posters said that for some...

Learning the main bluegrass arpeggios got me to learn the fretboard better. I also used Fretboard Learn (mentioned above) on my phone. Not even an hour’s worth of time using the app spread out in 3-5...

I have flown 10 times with a mandolin in the last two years or so. For most of those flights I have hung my mandolin, with a flight attendant's permission, in the closet just as you enter the plane....

I signed up for the free trial and learned Little Maggie. I liked the arrangement — a friend likes to call it in our local jam and I couldn’t find any tabs for it until I saw it on Tunefox. I...

Hmmm....seems a little unfair to imply you had a bad experience without saying what it was. Your reason might be very particular and not applicable to what others might experience, or it could be...

I agree. Try them all out. I like Banjo Ben’s song arrangements a lot, so I like to enroll for a month and learn a few new songs. Peghead Nation gives you the coherence of a thought out course; the...

If there isn’t a jam in your area, just start one up. I went to a jam that was too far from my house to be a regular thing, met a guitar player there who had also come from near where I live and we...

I set a number of goals this fall, the main one being to have about 20 "jammable" songs -- songs I can play fluently with some embellishment (i.e. multiple A parts and multiple B parts) -- by May....

For now, anyway, I still have a binder, too. I practice at my desk and use my iPad and sometimes my laptop, so the paper isn’t that essential, but I do use it, especially for new stuff. I do find the...

Once upon a time in my work life I started using index cards to track tasks, but then I moved to the Wunderlist app. I was contemplating starting to use index cards to organize my mando practice —...

I downloaded several last month and it worked fine. I emailed a question before I ordered about what key the tunes were in but they never answered.

Great videos, Pete. I liked the challenge of thinking about short, medium, and long term goals. I set a short term goal of having 20 jammable songs, meaning songs that I can play an intro to, have...

Still early in my mando journey, so this is not the perspective of someone who has a mastered the skill yet. If you have the key and an mp3, you’re good, and if you have tab to check it against, even...

As a newbie (now two years in), I bring Brad Laird's book with me to the jam that a friend and me started (side note: having founded the jam makes it hard for others to kick you out for playing...

I went ahead and took the plunge on the Colllings MT! Thanks for all the helpful ideas. I played them all again today, and I did enjoy the Weber more than yesterday (there was less competing noise in...

Went and played the Collings MT, the Bitterroot, and a Northfield F5S this morning. I liked them all, for sure. I don't have enough of an ear after just a year of playing to detect the differences...