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Thread: Teaching ideas for beginner

  1. #1
    Registered User mingusb1's Avatar
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    Default Teaching ideas for beginner

    Hello,

    I'm an experienced player and have had a number of mandolin students in the past. Previously my students were experienced with guitar or had played mandolin a while. Now I have a student that is new to all musical instruments.

    Can other instructors provide some advice on how to approach rank beginner lessons? I've already demonstrated the importance of posture/ergonomics, having a proper strap, tuning the instrument, left hand position, pick types and holding the pick.

    After that I had the student finger and open C chord and just practice a right hand strum pattern of down, down, down-up-down. They were able to get pretty comfortable with that and I instructed that the more time the better to spend on strumming rhythm and getting the right hand loose.

    I play bluegrass and oldtime so going forward would you recommend continued work on strumming rhythm with singing, or do you think melody/single-note playing should be introduced early on as well?

    Thanks for your consideration,
    Zack
    Member since 2003!

  2. #2

    Default Re: Teaching ideas for beginner

    As a fellow tutor I think a focus on strumming early on is a great idea; it'll encourage that looseness and more importantly will help with getting some volume out of the mandolin, something I find a challenge with beginner students I teach. A focus on singing is great if your student is willing, and then learning a melody that can be sung and picked perhaps. Mike Marshall uses You Are My Sunshine in one of the Artistworks videos (though I doubt this would have worked with one of my ten year old student's preference for German heavy metal), and it works really well. John Hardy is great for this too, and can be simplified and embellished endlessly as necessary. And Old Joe Clark of course.

    As a rule of thumb I would go for some single-line picking early on. It's challenging for a beginner for sure, but the sooner those building blocks are in place then they'll be in a better position to attempt some serious tunes down the line (so long as their enthusiasm stays intact!) and won't find themselves getting frustrated. I usually use some rudimentary DUDU patterns with open strings, and will perhaps write a simple tune to incorporate these principles with room to make the same tunes more elaborate. I'll try and avoid an over dependence on sheet music early on, so learning the tunes by ear to start with and then maybe handing over some tab/dots when they are getting a feel for it. Make sure they're focused on their hands and ears and not a piece of paper in front of them!

    It may well be something you already do, but one of my priorities with a new student is making sure they're listening to music with a mandolin somewhere in it, just so their ear is being trained to the noises they're capable of making. I'll always give them a bunch of artists to listen to and will sometimes make a CD. Just today one of my (older) beginner students had made some noticeable progress with her playing, and she said she'd just been spending more time listening and playing along.

    Hope this helps, and looking forward to hearing others suggestions!

  3. #3
    Registered User mingusb1's Avatar
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    Default Re: Teaching ideas for beginner

    Thanks for your reply Handy and the great ideas. I don't read notation and so basically teach ear training, although I advise students pursue learning to read if they are interested. I forgot to suggest listening to recordings with mandolin in them! Playing along with recordings is a great way to learn, build technique, speed, etc. Also, I've been a Zoom recorder (H2, H2n) devotee for years and I typically make short recordings of the lesson material for students. Going through something like Soldier's Joy playing rhythm parts (chords, double stops) once, then the melody, and then the rhythm parts again works well for students to play along with.

    Thanks again,
    Zack
    Member since 2003!

  4. #4

    Default Re: Teaching ideas for beginner

    Quote Originally Posted by Handy Hummingbird View Post
    As a fellow tutor I think a focus on strumming early on is a great idea; it'll encourage that looseness and more importantly will help with getting some volume out of the mandolin, something I find a challenge with beginner students I teach.
    I quite agree. Rhythm is vitally important (in rhythmic music forms). If a learner is unable to execute fundamental rhythmic form, there's little point in moving ahead -

    One of my mentors, Buddy Wachter, advocates placing a towel over the neck/strings while practicing strokes - elements of basic rhythmic forms - in concentrated study. We don't even have to mess with the fingering at all, while we focus on rhythm -

    Of course, the same applies in beginning fiddling as well (fwiw).

  5. #5
    Registered User Jon Hall's Avatar
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    Default Re: Teaching ideas for beginner

    I teach both children and adults. A combination of strumming two finger chords and single note melodies seems to work well for mandolin students. I try to get them playing an actual song asap. For students younger than 11 years old, I use either of the children mandolin books by Mel Bay and Steve Kaufman. Children seem to do better with a very structured program, from my experience.

  6. #6
    Registered User mingusb1's Avatar
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    Default Re: Teaching ideas for beginner

    Thanks everyone for your replies. Very helpful!

    Z
    Member since 2003!

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