Thats a tough one. I go on jaggs. I was listening to a lot of mandolin and regular orchestra for a while. Now I am really into duets for manbdolin and guitar. I like how they are both plectrum istruments, bt with more strings and a deeper range the guitar is good at diffrent things. Together the contrast and the interaction are striking.
I am listening to, lets see, Dorina Frati and Piera Dadomo doing a lot of Bach, Detlef Tewes and Boris Bagger doing Mozart, and I love that Cantabile album by Butch Bldassari and John Mock. Those three are in my rotation at home right now.
None of them do I aspire to play -these are just for listening.
I am trying to learn some Vivaldi right now, and I am working from the sheet music and having heard it many many times.
The mandolin is capable of so many and varied types of music. No limits actually. You can spend a lifetime following your heart.
Don't limit yourself to music that naturally features mandolin, or that is written for madolin, or that has been recorded for mandolin - just pursue the music you love and bring your mandolin.
That's great advice for any music lover.
I totally agree that as musicians it's our responsibility to take inspiration and ideas from anywhere we can find them!
And thanks for the advice! I'll get to listening.
Right now I'm working on the prelude of Bach's E maj Partita, and I'm just getting used to the precision required with some of the finger acrobatics haha.
Yes I have seen the now fameous video of Thile doing Bach'sE maj prelude.
Have you tried jaybuckey.com. ? This website has a tab labeled free stuff where you can find printable sheet music and tabs for a lot of bluegrass, Irish, Traditional, Christmas, etc. Each tune has a seperate staff/tab sheet for Mando, Fiddle, Guitar, and banjo, some dobro, too. An extra bonus is each song also has an accompanying series of downloadable MP3s, one of which is a bass and rhythm backing track that you can use to jam with. Good stuff!
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