Play something you don't know

I think I waste a lot of time practicing things I can already play or come easily to me, when I should be practicing the things I find hardest of all. Try this, if you need some practice with sliding (I know I do) - be sure to listen carefully to the Dan Tyminski CD this comes from to get the slides correct.

Carry Me Across The Mountain, in G:



I believe Adam Steffey is the mandolin player on that track. Here's me playing it, in case that helps:

Blue Chip Picks

I recently bought a Blue Chip Pick. They're kind of expensive for a pick, but they are very, very good. Previously I used a Wegen pick, the TF140, and that was a huge improvement over the ordinary picks I had used before, but this Blue Chip TAD 50 wipes the floor with it. The difference is particularly noticeable on the wound strings, where with other picks my mandolin can often sound muddy.

I didn't really want to part with 35 bucks for a pick, but considering it's improved both my sound and my playing ability, it really wasn't much to pay.

Doyle's Backup: Take Me In Your Lifeboat

Sometimes I think I learn more from a player when they're doing backup than when they're playing lead. There's no need for any flashy flourishes, or the mandatory excursion up the fretboard. I get to see how a player survives through each chord change, and learn what their real stock phrases are.

So I was delighted to find this gem from Doyle buried in the right stereo channel and played behind the verse of "Take Me In Your Lifeboat" (on The Bluegrass Album Band Compact Disc, vol 1), just after the fiddle break. It's another one in G, and has many of the same repeated phrases you'll recognise from the other transcriptions.

Stand Up

If I don't practice my breaks and other pieces standing up, I can't play them as well when I do. There's a different balance to the mandolin when I stand, and various muscles seem to have to compensate in different ways. This can be very confusing when I try to play a piece on stage for the first time that sounded great when I played it sitting down.

Moving licks from G to other keys

Doyle has some great licks in "On and On" and "Head Over Heels" that can be easily transposed into other open position keys like D and A, especially those that use the two lowest strings: just move them up to the middle two strings for D, and the top two strings for A.

Er, but I can't play that...

If you're having trouble playing through some tab, the chances are you're trying to play it too fast. Most times if you slow down the problem goes away. Then you have to gradually increase the pace until you can play it at a speed you're comfortable with.

Everyone gives that piece of advice, but I find it much harder to take and to stick to than you would think. One problem I often find is that I can play most parts of a tune or break up to a certain speed, but there might be a few passages that I can't quite make. It's more fun to play the piece up to speed, so sometimes it will take a long while before I realize that I'm fudging a certain section every time.

Sometimes, in order to play the problem section properly, I have to slow it down so much that it becomes hard even to keep track of the timing. Mostly I find that by isolating and playing the difficult passage over and over very slowly, I can eventually get the whole tune up to speed.

Doyle's break: Head Over Heels (Key of G)

This time from The Bluegrass Album Band volume 4, another G tune where Doyle does his stuff. This time he does a couple of leaps to the top of the fretboard and back, but mostly it's a variation of the same approach he uses in On And On, just a touch more bluesy this time. Here's the TableEdit file. Taken together, these two breaks give a pretty good idea of Doyle's basic technique, at least for the key of G.