Customer Reviews

Designing Mandolin Solos for Country Bluegrass Songs (Book and CD Edition)

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I didn't find this to be of much use to me, but that's because there are two meanings of the word "solo" when you're talking about mandolin music.

DEFINITION #1: The "turn" the mandolin takes in bluegrass music. Bluegrass music is hard to define, but one thing that seems to characterize it is that all the instruments take a turn and playing a solo. This solo can be almost anything, as long as it's in keeping with the key, the rhythm, and the feel of the song.

DEFINITION #2. Most mandolin books are nothing more than cheat-sheets: i.e., single-note melodies. But to make them sound convincing when playing by oneself, you'll have to learn how to flesh out these bare melodies with double-stops, triple-stops, four note chords, etc., to "put some meat on the bones." In music theory this is known as "harmonizing."

Well, this book, of low quality physically (home-made, apparently), purports to help you with the first, mainly by teaching you about the cycle of fifths, arpeggios, and scales. It doesn't have much at all that will help you with definition #2 (for that, I'd recommend A Guide To Non-Jazz Improvisation - Mandolin Edition)

Heck, even for definition #1, it's not that great. The book limits itself with describing the parameters of a solo (i.e,. the confines it must work within), but has little to aid you with coming up with a solo creatively.

Worse, there's a lot of irrelevant information thrown into the book that isn't going to help with either kind of solo: chop chords, tuning the mandolin to itself, setting the bridge, etc. I'd go elsewhere for that sort of thing.