OK, playing fiddle tunes is coming on fine, tremolo and folky improvising is work in progress, the tennis elbow has gone, the tuners work and I like the strings. BUT I'm getting stuck on learning chords. 'All' I want to do is for a start, be able to busk along with folk/bluegrass etc sessions without dots, then progress to Americana/Old Time/soft rock session backup without dots, then learn some jazz (OK, bring on the dots). But it's not happening 'cos I'm buzzing around from book to book like one of those blue fly things, and some of those books seem to do that too. I have:
'Mandolin' Greg Horne / Wayne Fulgate, complete.
Mandolin for Dummies.
Mandolin Exercises for Dummies.
A bunch of mando chord books.
Bluegrass Improvisation, can't remember the author.
2-3 general 'Bluegrass' books, featuring mostly them long chop chords in a narrow range of keys, some songs featuring capos (eh?).
Hal Leonard Mandolin Fake Book with 300 songs, hope your music stand's a good 'un.
Various YouTube downloads including Banjo Ben's 2 finger chord comping.
The more comprehensive Method books appear tocover a number of different styles of chording in less detail each than I'd like, but what i really (really) want is one comprehensive chord comping method that I can use for everything, that'll sound acceptable (if not optimal) across the board.
Any ideas, using the above or a magic chord method I don't have yet? I've hit this kind of thing before with other instruments, and getting over the initial hump to where you can 'manage' reasonably is the problem.
Thanks, Max
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