This book is designed for mandolinists seeking to develop their left and right-hand technique. The exercises included help reinforce fundamental actions of playing,and challenge the player to master the various permutations and combinations of these fundamentals. Each hand is given primary focus, working across all four strings or up and down the fretboard before both hands are challenged simultaneously. Through these exercises, a player can improve their functioning abilities and facilitate better control over the instrument. Practicing these workouts can help with the mechanics of playing as well, helping a player improve accuracy, speed, and agility in both hands
This methodology book designed for the intermediate to advanced mandolinist offers you, as a mandolin player, a new voice. Or, if you're already crosspicking, many new ideas can be added to your arsenal. Each song includes a preparatory study that allows you the opportunity to gain a solid footing before attempting the piece itself. These studies can be applied in other areas as backup ideas, song ideas, or take offs for improvisation. Styles discussed are: Two-String, Bluegrass, Fiddle, Classical, and Jazz/Ragtime. Written in tablature.
This user-friendly text, is ideal for daily practice. Contains frequently used major, minor, scale forms, and exercises. Written in notation, tab and fretboard diagrams.
Mentored by three legendary guitarists, Michael O’Dorn is the living repository of not only the Merle Travis thumbstyle technique, but also the fingerstyle legacies of Chet Atkins and French guitarist, Marcel Dadi. This book contains a discussion of the differences between fingerstyle and thumbstyle technique, plus the most advanced exercises and tunes of any of the author’s three books for Mel Bay Publications — a must-have for any serious fingerstyle guitarist! The book begins with a series of progressive picking patterns with practice points that guide the player through intermediate and advanced licks and techniques. The harmony of each exercise was intentionally left unresolved so that it can be repeated to perfection. Soon, you will be playing O’Dorn’s challenging Travis/Atkins/Dadi-inspired licks and compositions using the left-hand hammer-on, pull-off, and thumb-over techniques, and the right-hand thumb rake and palm mute. While the purpose of this book is to help you establish study habits that enhance your performance abilities, the exercises can also be used as intros, outros or springboards to kickstart your own compositions. At the end, as a payoff for completing the book’s lessons, the author presents three original compositions for player and audience enjoyment. Learn the evolutionary, often unconventional fingerstyle techniques of Travis, Atkins, Dadi, and O’Dorn with Killer Technique®: Fingerstyle Guitar! Includes access to an outstanding online audio recording of the book’s 47 exercises and solos.
Written in standard notation and tablature for the intermediate to advanced mandolinist, “Angeline the Baker,” “Darlin’ Corey,” and 16 other classic old-time tunes never sounded so good as in these solo arrangements by Tommy Norris. The author himself performs each tune flawlessly on the companion online audio tracks. Suggested chords are provided for optional accompaniment. Care has been taken to select the most popular tunes of this genre for inclusion in this book. “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down” without it!
Theory and Improvisation for the Modern Mandolinist is a two book series that teaches improvisation in many musical styles along with theory concepts and how they apply to the mandolin. Each book provides access to different backing tracks and solo examples to help you learn. Every chapter includes scales presented in a variety of common formats: standard notation, tablature and fretboard charts. Volume 2, Jazz and Beyond will expand your knowledge of theory by teaching you advanced chords, scales, and progressions. Sample solos and progressions are included at the end of each chapter to practice with the recordings. When finished with this book, you should feel confident improvising over any chord progression, and have a great understanding of jazz theory and how it applies to the mandolin. Includes access to online audio.
With decades of experience on the mandocello and even more on the mandolin and guitar, the author presents a comprehensive and progressive approach to learning to play this versatile instrument. Written entirely in bass clef—the logical clef for an instrument with the same low-to-high CGDA tuning as an orchestral cello—the book starts with basic technique and music theory and ultimately brings the reader to an intermediate to advanced plateau. Whether you come to the mandocello as your first fretted instrument or transition from mandolin or guitar, this method will facilitate your progress as a literate musician. The method includes mandocello etudes by pioneering multi-instrumentalist Myron Bickford (1876–1960), popular folk melodies, a pair of duets, and a few mandocello parts from mandolin orchestra arrangements. Fretboard diagrams and standard notation introduce scales, chords, position playing, and shifting/stretching concepts as each new key signature engenders new challenges. From basic down and upstrokes to tremolo, great attention is paid to mandocello picking technique, sight reading and overall musicianship. Most tunes in this book are written as solos. Along with its online play-along audio tracks, the variety of teaching repertoire in this new method will guide you step by step in mastering the mandocello in several musical genres. Then, as a skilled mandocellist who reads the bass clef, you will be welcome as an optional low voice in any musical ensemble. Includes access to online audio.
All the exercises in Killer Technique: Classical Guitar are either based on orinspired by challenging passages and patterns that appear in compositions. Technical elements and passages have been stripped down and transformed into exercises to help the reader concentrate on specific targets through repetition.The exercises cover various techniques, such as finger independence in bothhands, different types of shifts, in-context slurs, in-context arpeggios, scales, tremolo and switches between different technical elements. The exercises are presented in standard notation and tablature. Explanations andinstructions are also provided. By using standard notation, the exercises include detailed information regarding fingerings and strings. Tablature versions of theexercises are also included, however, the rhythm and finger information is written in standard notation. The exercises are divided into two main sections: right-hand and left-hand. Eachsection consists of different categories specific to that hand. The exercises are not written in any particular order within each category - by practicing these exercises, the reader will master difficult technical transitions when they are encountered in compositional contexts
(Instructional). The Hal Leonard Irish Bouzouki Method is designed for anyone just learning to play the Irish bouzouki. This comprehensive and easy-to-use beginner's guide focuses on teaching the basics of the instrument as well as accompaniment techniques for a variety of Irish song forms.
