Song of the Vogon Boatmen
Song of the Vogon Boatmen
Several of my favorites include:
Soldier's Joy
Ashokan Farewell
Tennessee Waltz
Arkansas Traveler
Memories of Father Angus McDonnell
Red Haired Boy
Whiskey Before Breakfast
Good luck and welcome to the Cafe'.
I agree with whatever you like.
Next would be whatever your friends and family can sign along to.
One of the very first songs I ever learned was the clash's Bank Robber. It's a great song played in any style, my friends know it and it still get request to be played around the campfire.
My point is that if pick YOUR songs you will enjoy playing them and most likely have better success in the key early stages. Just keep it realistic.
"we should restore the practice of dueling. It might improve manners around here." -Edward Abbey
All,
I left the question broad to develop a list in several genres and difficult levels. I have already figured out happy birthday and marry had a little lamb. I bought Greg Horne beginner mandolin. I have played the saxophone for around 15 years. I've found that this background has helped me speed through things. I've been mainly focusing on form, Note locations on fretts, and cords.
So i go back to the general question. I thought keeping it general would bring diverse responses that could help the community. I do know that you should learn songs you like, but I also know a good player is able to transitio ln to a diverse number of styles. I want to be able to play classical, rock, jazz, folk, bluegrass, etc.
Everyone will have an opinion, but it is interesting to look at the overlap of those opinions.
Thanks,
E
Thanks,
E
My advice is that the tune every NEW mandolin player should learn
is simply whatever comes easiest to the player. Get the fingers moving.
Whether this selection is made based on your level of skill or the
appeal of the particular piece, it is a fact that getting to grips with one tune
or even parts of a tune will open the door to playing many others.
Playing a tune that you like will inspire you and playing a tune that you
can manage early will really encourage you, then once you are up and running
hopefully you will find that other material comes into focus quite quickly. So early on
don't worry about what tunes you should learn and concentrate on what you CAN learn.
Just get those fingers moving.
And enjoy the trip!
I took the trouble of learning the U.S. anthem ... it's actually easier to play than it is to sing (that octave jump is easier with fingers than the voice.) On my electric mando I put all kinds of ornamentation on it a la Hendrix and it's quite the crowd pleaser. (Crowd meaning my five friends.)
Bach's Minuet in G is a solid part of the Baroque repertoire and not hard to learn. Also it teaches you the G scale; once learned you can improvise at will with it.
Learn what pleases you first, but if you want to entertain an audience learn the traditional favorites: Happy Birthday, popular folk melodies (Scarborough Fair, Greensleeves), generic seasonal melodies approved by your faith and/or ideological tradition and local ordinances, and so forth.
(Technically, Happy Birthday is copyrighted, but you can probably get away with it. If you feel bad you can always send a small check to Warner/Chappell Music with "Happy Birthday" on the memo line.)
I like to recommend the Dan Fox book "Mandolin Gold" as it covers so many styles and gets you playing tunes and songs that are widely recognisable and it's kind of good that someone else has done all the donkey work.
The songs and tunes included are;
Arkansas Traveler
Banks of the Ohio
Billy in the Lowland
Black-Eyed Susie
Cindy
Coney in the Creek
Fly Around my Pretty Little Miss
Cripple Creek
Good for the Wrist
Li'l Liza Jane
Little Maggie
Old Joe Clark
The Crawdad Song
Possum up a Gum Stump
Sally Goodin'
Pretty Polly
Skip to My Lou
Soldier's Joy
Turkey in the Straw
Whoa, Mule,k Whoa!
Wildwood Flower
Chicken Reel
Delaware Hornpipe
Sailor's Hornpipe
The White Cockade
Ah! Marie
Torna a Surriento (Come Back to Sorrento)
Roman Guitar (Chitarra Romana)
Wedding Tarantella
O Sole Mio!
Funiculi-Funicula
Ah! Vous Dirai-Je,Maman (Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star)
All through the Night
The Ash Grove
The Flower of Monemvasy
For He's a Jolly Good Fellow
Podmoskovnye Vyechera (Midnight in Moscow)
Two Guitars
Scarborough Fair
Amazing Grace
I've Got Peace like a River
Simple Gifts ('Tis the Gift to be Simple)
Aura Lea
Buffalo Gals
Golden Slippers
Camptown Races
Good Night, Ladies
Listen to the Mockingbird
Little Brown Jug
Ol' Dan Tucker
The Old Gray Mare
Reuben And Rachel
America, the Beautiful
The Girl I Left Behind Me
Yankee Doodle Dandy
You're a Grand Old Flag
When Johnny comes Marching Home
Beautiful Brown Eyes
Bile Them Cabbagte Down
Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie
Home on the Range
Jesse James
John Hardy
The Wabash CAnnonball
Bessarbian Horra
Hava Nagila
Waves of the Danube (Anniversary Song)
Chosen Kalle Mazel Tov
Careless Love
Don't Let Your Deal Go Down
Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad
Hard, Ain't it Hard
Pick a Bale o'Cotton
Salty Dog
Come All Ye Fair and Tender LAdies
The Cuckoo
Down in the Valley
The Drunken Sailor
Man of Constant Sorrow
In The Pines
Poor Wayfaring Stranger
Nine Hundred Miles
Shady Grove
Good Morning To All
Hush, LIttle Baby
The Itsy Bitsy Spider
Old MacDonald's Farm
POlly Wolly Doodle
Pop! Goes the Weasel
This Old Man
Deck the Halls
Jingle Bells
Fum, Fum, Fum,
Silent Night
Catholic Boys
Danny Boy (Londonderry Air)
Irish Washerwoman
Jeb Wilson's Clog Dance
Paddy Whack
Rakes of Mallow
Stack o'Barley
Ode to Joy (From Beethoven, Symphony no.9)
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring
Serenade (Toselli)
Plaisir D'Amour
Serenade (Drigo)
Canzonetta (from Don Giovanni), W.A.Mozart
Concerto in C Major (Vivaldi)
Eoin
"Forget that anyone is listening to you and always listen to yourself" - Fryderyk Chopin
OP, if you've got enough experience in music, I'd say just select a few tunes you like and try to play 'em on the mandolin. You'd be surprised how many popular tunes can be played with just a handful of chords. Then, of course, you can go crazy like me and start transposing metal songs and somesuch
Vivaldi isn't THAT hard. Not much harder than many of the celtic pieces recommended here. And certainly easier than, say, Bach
Plus useful for developing some techniques that you won't learn while playing bluegrass. No one's saying a beginner will be able to play it as well as a pro, but it's still useful to try and learn.
Since mandolin IS an instrument associated with Italian music before other styles, I like the second idea.
Everyone seems to think mandolin was invented to play British Isles/American folk music!
I'm impressed by the variety of music in this collection, even Italian, Klezmer and classical!
I don't think the mandolin was invented to play bluegrass BUT it sure adapted well
I agree with Happy Birthday, and the national anthem. And for a beginner, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and any other children's songs that are easy, and therefore encouraging to learn. Christmas songs, of your choice, are good to know since you can use them every year. This goes for any instrument, not just mandolin. For the genre of your choice, learn what you like best, out of all the tunes people will list. Eventually, develop a long list of tunes you are working on, but focus on a smaller group of them for daily practice. Above all, have fun with it.
Well, yes, a very experienced and well-rounded mandolin player should be able to transition across different genres and playing styles. To be quite honest, there are very few professional mandolin players who can do this. But as a new player, I don't think there's any advantage to getting ahead of yourself or trying to achieve professional genre-jumping. There's the risk of becoming the proverbial "jack of all trades, master of none". Each of these genres has specific skills and techniques involved, and they take an appreciable length of time to master.
I'm not necessarily advocating focusing only on one single style to the exclusion of all others, but I do think a new player is better served by focusing on one thing at a time. Deep immersion into, say, bluegrass can take years of listening and studying and playing to fully realize the nuances that make it what it is. It is wholly different than playing classical, which is wholly different again than playing rock. And you didn't mention old-time or Irish traditional, but these are once again wholly different animals. The difference may not be apparent to the casual listener or new mandolin player, but again, it takes very deep immersion into each genre to suss out the fine differences and learn how to play them as they ought to be played.
I do commend your enthusiasm, and I don't want to discourage you. But a common mandolin newbie pitfall is jumping into it without any sort of road map. You want to play it all. And that's great. But I would suggest a more specific and structured approach that involves an early period of familiarization with the fretboard and the application of music theory to a fifths-tuned instrument (which it sounds like you're already working on), followed by study and immersion into one style of music. Then later expansion into other styles.
I'm sure some here will disagree with me, and that's fine. There are plenty of different approaches. But if you want to sound bluegrassy, you're going to need to really focus on bluegrass for a while (read: years). We've all heard of the folks who show up at bluegrass jams and try to play bluegrass without really understanding it. Or folks who try to play traditional folk music but sound too jazzy. Being a general and generic all-around mandolin player is fine and dandy if that's what you're after, but I guess the question that you need to answer for yourself is whether you really want to master any of the genres you mentioned. It will be very difficult if your learning approach is not specific to each one.
As a newbie too, I want to learn:
I know a song to get on your nerves - just so I can annoy my neighbours to hell.
I think it's best not to limit yourself when starting out unless you only picked up the instrument to play a particular style of music. Loads of my bluegrass and classical music friends did this with the mandolin only so they can play their genre of music because they liked what they heard in that style and they thought the mandolin bit was what they wanted to do. These folks would swap instruments long before they'd consider swapping styles. But you're coming to the instrument with your stylistic options open and that's a fine place to begin as a mandolinist.
Just learn the tunes to get you going on the instrument. There's a lot to be gained from a broad education on your instrument of choice. The subtlety and nuances of playing within a style come after a time; primarily from hearing them, then understanding what you're hearing, then finding out how that is done and learning the required techniques to recreate that. But without a particular style or genre objective, beginning by learning a stack of tunes and accompaniments until you decide where to focus in detail is a pretty good start.
Once you feel you have a good grip of the many techniques available on the mandolin, you can then use many of the tunes you've learned to develop your ability to perform convincingly within that style. You'll be in a better position to know what styles really suit your temperament. That is probably a good time to shift your focus to the detailed understanding of how to make the tunes really work. That is a good time to be really immersive in your learning. Many aspects of playing within different styles can only be learned properly by playing with others who have a deep understanding of the genre. If you're already competent as an instrumentalist then getting to play with those others is much easier to achieve if you're on top of all the basics.
Eoin
"Forget that anyone is listening to you and always listen to yourself" - Fryderyk Chopin
Been there, done that. Shall rattle on about it at length sometime.
I believe this has been mentioned, but I'll rephrase and reiterate: Play what you like to play. Find ways to make these songs sound like you hear them in your mind. You can make it mandolin music in the process.
But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. - Dennis Miller
Furthering Mandolin Consciousness
Finders Keepers, my duo with the astoundingly talented and versatile Patti Rothberg. Our EP is finally done, and available! PM me, while they last!
Agree totally with Tobin, so many people think that they can play several styles but anyone that really plays one of those styles know that he can't. Years ago John Denver recorded "How Mountain Girls Can Love" bluegrass style. No BG picker I know thought it was bluegrass. Denver was good at what he did,but not that.
Alan Jackson's recent foray into bluegrass also comes to mind. He's a great musician, it was good music, and I appreciate his homage to bluegrass, but it still sounded like his usual country & western fare to me. He even had some bona-fide bluegrass pickers team up with him, but since he called all the shots in production, it just didn't come off as authentic.
So yeah, like I said, there are very few professionals who can pull it off.
Indeed.
And, re jack of all/master of none, multi-'styles' etc:
Many, many approaches in musical expression, creativity, form, style... Sure, probably can't master everything...but how are your 'faking' skills? It's an aspect of 'playing' in that one can show relative proficiency, 'mastery,' etc. Do you suppose anyone's ever 'faked it' - successfully? (my general 'rule': music is generally anywhere from 1% to 99% faking it )
Check out the film made by Denny Tedesco - Tommy's son - 'The Wrecking Crew'
Lying is the progenitor to good fiction - *or whatever the saying goes
(Like Matisse said - pertaining to visual rendering)...you gotta be able to hear it
For example, playing for self vs performing publicly; I play differently - various instrument, repertoire, degree of improv, etc. - depending on environment/situation/audience. Depending on situation, I may play with some abandon and improvise a lot, and other times I don't stray from a memorized tune, figure, etc. My 'style' of performing - that is, the situation I typically most enjoy - is when I can just grab an instrument and play and let it flow - without much 'deliberation.' (There are many factors of course: audience preferences and level of engagement; my preferences and disposition; etc.). I like to be able to put a lot of emotion into my playing, so I probably perform this 'style' better than, say, more rehearsed material.
Last edited by catmandu2; Sep-11-2015 at 3:09pm.
I am laughing because that is the very first song I learned how to play, and super easy (well I think it is anyway). It has served me well! One evening, I had a half dozen friends over for dinner. I was sitting on the sofa relaxing while one guy was expressing his anger about his boss and saying he wished he could do this and do that to his boss etc, etc, etc. I had the mandolin on my lap and started playing the Godfather theme.....well, ya just had to be there.
Last edited by Emmett Marshall; Sep-11-2015 at 4:34pm. Reason: fixed duplicate word
Weber F5 Bitteroot Octave - "...romantic and very complicated."
My instruments professionally maintained by...RSW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7UmUX68KtE
It's fairly easy to fake it in a style you really know, at least for a song or two, but if you don't really know a style your faking it sounds like you are faking it. Not saying it's not fun just don't deceive yourself.
Nirvana's "Come As You Are" riff for mando ... always gets a smile from aging '90s hipsters.
(G string) 00125252210500
No, for me it would NOT be fun - faking something I had no chops and feeling for.. What I'm getting at is - when you assimilate a form, you can craft something from its essences - although you may not have specific tunes or phrases worked out. I do this a lot on certain instruments and styles. 'Faking' is probably not the right term to use, as it's probably more extemporization or invention - perhaps more akin to improvisational approaches. After one studies and plays in a given style for some time, one (may) feel sufficient affinity that it becomes a natural expression or form to work with. I sometimes play (perform) certain figures and rhythms and essentially craft something (presumably of value) spontaneously - using various approaches in improv/musical development, etc. So, I guess I'm playing elements and figures and riffing in an idiom, and 'faking' that it's a 'song,' for example, or something specific that I've worked up for the occasion, when oftentimes it is not. It's risky - and it doesn't always flow seamlessly from beginning to end, but I find (as a solo performer) that it reliably enables me to perform more spontaneously, and emotionally.
Yes, you wouldn't want to try to perpetrate a ruse, I would think, in playing for an audience in a style in which, in fact, you may not be fluent. This is - I agree - generally not a good thing Although it's one way to learn -
I know what you are saying, but isn't the whole thing a ruse? I every performance we only play those tunes we know. And we do not disabuse our audience of the notion that we are experts in the genre, or on the instrument in general. We carry it like we casually picked these tunes out of a vast repertory. Truth is, these are the ones we can play. Maybe in some cases the only ones.
I'm not sure I can play the mandolin - but I know I can play these tunes on the mandolin.
Its the performer's dirty little secret really. And we have been doing it since we only knew three tunes.
Well let me be the first.
I don't disagree, if you are Alan Jackson, or Glen Campbell. But for the majority of us, we ain't-a-gonna master anything at that level. Ever. Regardless of our approach. The examples of genetic anomalies of extreme talent and musicality don't apply to us.
If mastery is the goal, and there is sufficient talent to warrant it, and sufficient motivation, I say hunker down to that genre and go for it. For most of the rest of us, I say play everything you thinks is fun or curious, find fun and interest in everything you play, leave mastery to the masters, and just have a metric ton of fun. Playing music is rip snorting fun, at all levels.
I respect mastery too much to think that my not achieving it has anything to do with being interested on lots of different kinds of music.
And wasn't there just a thread about how the great of the great have a musical curiosity about other genres? Perhaps not to perform regularly in, but to have fun in?? Bluegrassers playing Bach, and classical players playing jazz and what not?
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