Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #195953 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 64 pages

Customer Reviews

A Mixed Effort
The introductory material in the book is rather brief for my tastes. There are short pieces on how to hold the mandolin, how to pick, how to tune, an introduction to the musical notation used in the book, and some scales. I would have liked more exercises given to build up to playing actual tunes

Around a third of the book is taken up with song tabs, with instruction on how to play them being a little sparse. However, the tab is very clear, and they really come into their own with the excellent CD that accompanies the book. Each song features on the CD twice - once with the mandolin piece, to help you understand how it should be played, and once with only the backing (banjo, fiddle, guitar) so that you can play along.

Without the CD, I'd rate this book at two stars. With the CD, it gets a fantastic 4.

Bluegrass Mandolin
Howdy Pardners! I think this book would be ideal for intermediate mandolinists as some of the solos are rock hard and too challenging for beginners. The tunes are all great and cover all techniques for bluegrass such as crosspickin', double stops, rhythm, tremelo, slides, hammer-ons, etc. The accompaning C.D is very good and helps a lot and there is also quite a comprehensive chord chart. This book is well worth a purchase if you're into bluegrass. See ya'll at the hoe down.

excellent introduction to bluegrass techniques
This is a very practical guide, easy to follow TAB, includes simple and more progressive variations of each of the 60 or so tunes.Statman takes you through chord playing, crosspicking, double stopping and more. Ideal for the beginner, the more experienced player will not be stretched and would be better served by the Sam Bush teaching series.