If you're like most of my mandolin students, your mandolin is currently in dire need of new strings!
I feel your pain; I really don't enjoy changing strings (as you'll see in this video!)
But: nothing improves your tone, intonation and general sense of well-being as quickly as...
These past few weeks I've been enjoying the Ukrainian sit-com "Servant of the People," starring comedian (and current President of Ukraine) Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The opening credits take us on a tour of a sparkling pre-invasion Kyiv, all to the tune of this charming melody.
It's a...
It's not much of a secret anymore (here in North America) that the mandolin is alive and well in Brazil.
While the mandolin in the U.S. has become associated with rural music, in Brazil the mandolin emerged primarily as an urban instrument, in the music called choro.
Luperce Miranda was...
When I was in college, on a whim one semester I took an elective class called “Yiddish Music Performance Styles,” taught by Professor Hankus Netsky.
Prof. Netsky delivered amazing lectures: a well-researched history of klezmer music's origin in Eastern Europe and...
When you are strumming three or four strings at time on the mandolin, sometimes it’s great to let the notes on each string ring out until the next pick stroke. Open string chords sound great like this.
However, in most styles of music with a beat or a “groove,” you’ll need...
“These are a few of my favorite things….” so goes the great Rodgers & Hammerstein song.
In this post, I’ll simply share a few of my favorite chord voicings, all of which can be found in the solo arrangement of Choro Negro that you can hear in full at the top of the...
The mandolin, with its tightly wound strings and high treble sound, is the ideal instrument to play drum parts in a string ensemble.
For example, an essential function for the mandolin in bluegrass music is playing the snare drum parts of the groove on beats 2 & 4 of every measure - the...
Can you get the Woody Guthrie song “This Land Is Your Land" into your head for a minute? The first lyric is “This land is YOUR land.”
I’ve used bold and italics to indicate that the song’s first down beat is on the word “your.” So where do we put...
It is very common for students learning traditional Irish dance music to excel at "reels" (the tunes in 4/4 time), while at the same time experience problems playing jigs, the tunes in 6/8 time.
This is perfectly understandable, as most of us have played lots of music in 4/4 time, but have...
The effect called “vibrato” is the default setting most of the time for classical violinists and vocalists.
When the Beatles called in a string quartet for the recording of “Eleanor Rigby,” producer George Martin struggled to convince the seasoned, classically-trained...
When I was a kid, the music I first learned on guitar was "classic rock" - the Beatles, Carole King, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, etc...
A lot of my students play this same type of music on their mandolins. One question that has come up over and over again: "How do...
When I was a teenager, I learned to play the bass in my high school’s jazz band and musical theater pit orchestras.
My first professional musician gigs were on bass as well - old fashioned big band gigs in a tuxedo and musical theater pits dressed in all black.
One great thing I took...
