Customer Reviews

Essential Techniques for Mandolin

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As another review mentioned, this is an intermediate to advanced DVD. But that's ok, as our skills develop so should our teaching materials.

After some basic information on how to hold the pick and how to keep the right wrist loose while picking Chris jumps right into a basic tune, "Red Haired Boy" which he uses to demonstrate several techniques throughout the DVD. He covers scale positions, arppegios, position shifting, right hand technique, and left hand technique. You'll learn several songs while you're working on these new techniques like "Red Haired Boy", "Ode to a Butterfly" (The opening song to Nickle Creek's first album) and others.

On the DVD version there's a nice index that shows exactly what he's working on in each of the 42 segments. However, you can only jump to the start of a section which may have 5 or 6 segments in it. But it's still pretty easy to navigate to the segment you want to study. Also, the smaller segments make it easy to "rewind" one segment to study the last 2 or 3 minutes again.

If you play mandolin this will probably become one of the "must haves" of study materials.

Not only does Chris Thile go over techniques like pick theory, cross-picking, hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, and shifting. But he also treats his viewers with performances of his original compositions. "When Mandolins Dream" for the introduction and "Raining at Sunset." Unfortunately the included booklet does not include these two tunes. However it does include "Red Haired Boy", "Hop the Fence" (a Chris Thile tune), "Swallowtail Jig" and "Ode to a Butterfly" (another Chris Thile tune).

Also included is a lengthy discussion and demonstration of 3 octave scales and arpeggios that he got from a violin book, complete with positions and shifting. Chris definitely doesn't stay in first position and moves gracefully all over the fingerboard. You are treated to his long elegant fingers gliding up, down and around.

Two things he does not go into are tremolo and chopping chords. I guess there are a lot of other dvds that cover this area.

I like the discussion of bad habits and why you should avoid them. He does a great job explaining left-hand positioning, finger placement and efficiency, as well as right hand relaxation and picking position.

Finally, it's just an overall nice instructional DVD, because even though he is teaching, he does not make it boring, and he definitely treats you to four original compositions (two included with notation and tab).

Firstly, I'm a huge Chris Thile fan, so just sitting back and watching this is a great experience.
Anyway, most would say that this is an intermediate video, as he takes you through some tough stuff early on. But he does start at the beginning ("this is how you hold the pick").
As far as I know this is the only mandolin video on DVD, so that's a big plus too.
A "must have" for anyone learning mandolin at any level.

Good for Improvers (2 years+) & Intermediate wishing to stepup their technique.
Covers both Left & Right hand focus and exercises. Pick-up Notes and Excellent Arpeggio exercises through the keys.
A bit of Pull-Offs and Hammer-Ons.
However a bit scatty and distracting at times, nor did I like the dark backdrop and dark finger board on the mandolin.
The menu access to exercises could be better organised, more granular and greatly improved. I did like the addition of the sheet music.
A good resource to the mandolin player and one for the collection.

However, if you are a complete beginner/improver I would recommend you get 'How to Play the Irish Mandolin' by Anthony Warde [Waltons Music - CW Productions Ireland].
In addition to scales, tuning, left & right hand focus and exercises also covers the following-(clearly explained)
Triplets, Arpeggios, Hammer ons, Pull-Offs, minor keys, using tone, Tremolo, Cross Picking, Damping, Pinkie (Luidin)-little finger exercises, split strings etc.
However note that it does NOT include sheet music of the tunes.
For Intemediate to Advanced players I would recommend 'New Celtic Mandolin' DVD by Simon Mayor [Acoustics Masterclass] with a number of tunes with 'Top of the Class' breakdown of how they are played. One of my favourites a slow air 'Buachaill Chaol Dubh'(in Gaelic 'the dark slender boy')and associated booklet ISBN:095227762X [Acoustics].
After learning the melodic skeleton of your tunes go for melodic fragments and variations as described in 'Developing Melodic Variations' by John McGann[MelBay]0786650990.
A solid referene is also ''Blue Grass Mandolin' by Jack Tottle [Oak Pub] ISBN: 0825601541 & 0711903204 (UK) & ''110 Scottish Tunes' [Waltons] ISBN: 9781871


For Irish session music sheets and accompanying CD recording use 'The Foinn Seisiun Book' ASIN:B000PSR3FW from 'Comhaltas', Monkstown, South County Dublin, Ireland. This is now becoming the standard for all Irish Sessions or O' Neills book of Tunes (1,850+ 'port/foinn'- i.e. tunes) [Waltons]ISBN:1857200276 or [Mel Bay]0786624981 or the series of 'Irish Traditional Music Session Tunes' by A. Sullivan [Halshaw Music UK].

See also 'Teach yourself Mandolin by Ear' 07866 07149.
For Irish Tin Whistle Tunes [Waltons] in Spanish 185720-1345, in Italian -1353, in French -1337, in German - 1329 and in Japanese -1329.

For a guide to 'SessEtte' ('Sessiun' Etiquette) see 'Field Guide to Irish Sessions' by Barry Fox[Rinehart]ISBN:1568331940. Good luck and enjoy.

As an absolutely new mandolin player, I was very happy to see all of the material online (Youtube and other sites), but frustrated by the lack of technique these videos actually show. They are great for learning some tricks or songs, but I haven't seen any yet that really teach proper technique - probably because most people find it boring and it doesn't draw a lot of attention.

I purchased this DVD despite other reviews that state this is not for the beginner. I am happy to say that after three months of playing, starting with this video was a great idea. The video teaches proper techniques (hence the name) including pic stroke theory for jigs, reels, etc, proper hand positions, hammer-on, pull-off, fingering positions, and more. Learning proper technique before you develop the bad habits saves the frustration of re-learning and allows you to develop faster.

Chris does an amazing job of going through things a couple of times, first pretty slow so you can pick it up, then faster for the more intermediate player. This makes it easy to listen, then practice, then play along with the slow parts. Playing through it fast gives you the idea of what it should really sound like and sets a goal to work up to. That combined with the printed music in standard and tab notation really helps pick up the songs, scales, and arpeggios quickly.

Yikes! I am a huge Thile fan and picked up the mandolin because of his inspiration, but beginners and most intermediates, beware. While Chris gives some great beginning tips on pick stroke theory and how to hold the pick, the second half of the video explores harder scales and Chris's solo on "Ode to a Butterfly". The video progresses from easy to do and understand to "lightspeed" pretty quickly. I was frustrated after about 20 minutes. On the "Hop the Fence" track he invites you to jam with him, but at the pace he plays the song. If you are a beginner, start with something basic, not this video. The songs performed by Chris are awesome, but at the same time make you think "I'll never be that good".

As a 50-something mandolin player wanting to go beyond the basics, I found this DVD a real help with enough substance to keep me busy a long time. The instructor, Chris Thile, teaches mandolin playing with a very patient but intelligent tone and good humor. The only thing I can quibble over is I thought some of the video shots could have been done better / closer / different angles to show the fingering more clearly. But this can be overcome by watching the segments over a few times -- which I guess is the point of having DVD anyway.

The DVD is probably not for a raw beginner or someone who doesn't know about music playing in general. Fortunately I have experience on brass instruments so terms like "arpeggios" are not foreign. I agree with Chris' emphasis on arpeggio drills and scales, and for example emphasis on playing notes evenly - a point often overlooked by teachers on a lot of instruments. Chris teaches a balance of songs and drills, which equates to equal amounts of fun and work. He's a real pro as well. I was very pleasantly surprised with this DVD purchase and highly recommend it to anyone who's at the intermediate mandolin playing stage -- or like me, who wants to get there.

When this first came out on VHS I was just starting to learn the mandolin myself. Since Chris was a big reason I started to play mandolin in the first place I was very interested in what this video had to offer.

He opens with an original Caprice for Mandolin which is quite stunning. Then he discusses tone and touch, even some pick theory. He rightly points out that many people set their action too high, choking their instrument and putting themselves at risk of injury. One of the exercises he introduces later (Hop the Fence), I still play every day!

Like other reviewers have already mentioned, this is a great tool for intermediate to advanced players because there are several layers of difficulty. However, he does assume that you have at least a basic working knowledge of music theory. In that regard I wouldn't recommend it for stone cold beginners.

This is not for beginners. And there is essentially no musical theory offered here, just a series of exercises to build right and left hand muscle memory. The scales introduced in this video are very valuable (and exhausting!). When going through the arpeggio section, you can see how his mastery of these exercises contributed to the original composition performed at the beginning of the DVD. This video comes with tablature that will get you on the same page as Chris for the most part, however, viewers will have to devote a lot of time to learning these tunes prior to "playing along". Definitely a better purchase than the Ronnie McCoury DVD.

I haven't got much to add to the previous reviews, this DVD is fantastic. I do have one additional piece of information that might help non-US purchasers, though. According to the amazon.com product information, this DVD is region 1 encoded and won't play outside the US and Canada. In fact, I put it into a region 4 only DVD player and it played straight away without my having to alter the region setting, which is definitely set to 4. So I don't think this DVD has any region encoding. At least, not the one they sent me!