We already talked about the books, which Alison Stephens wrote for Astute Music.
There is another book with six short pieces for the intermediate player by Barbara Pommerenke-Steel called "Reflections".
I started with "First Signs of Spring".REFLECTIONS, six pieces for solo mandolin, is a collection of short pieces which have been composed with specific musical or technical aspects in mind. This book utilizes many commonly used mandolin techniques including: legato tremolo, stroking patterns, arpeggio technique, chords and harmonics in highly attractive, accessible and rewarding pieces for the Intermediate player (approx. Grades 2-3).
If you follow this link and click "Images" you can have a look at the sheet music: http://www.astute-music.com/shop/man...int-p-104.html
The techniques practiced in this piece seem to be position shifting with economical left-hand movements and playing a melody with either basss note or arpeggio accompaniment.
In the introduction to the book, she explains that every downstroke should be played as a rest stroke.
That's completely new to me and doesn't make complete sense in so far, as the melody above the chords in the second part is played entirely on the e-string, where a rest stroke is not possible,
In another thread, Martin mentioned, that Barbara is a mandolin player of the German school.
So my question: is the preference of the downstroke as a rest stroke typical for German players ?
I mean. it's OK to have the rest stroke in your bag of tricks to accentuate a particular note, but every downstroke a rest-stroke...?
At least to me, that feels a bit uncomfortable, so I played this nice piece completely in free-stroke mode.
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