Customer Reviews

How to Improvise Bluegrass Mandolin Solos

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As a player for more than 20 years, I often find method books that are not much more than a collection of tunes. You learn them note for note, and then that's how you play them. Not the case with this one...this method takes several phrases and brings them together to create really decent sounding solos. You can then mix and match the phrases to create your own solos. One of the things I liked best about it, was that the first time I played through the phrases, I picked up a couple of licks that I could immediately incorporate into my own playing. Any time I get a book that actually adds to the grab bag of "licks" that I have, instead of adding more tunes, I consider it a good book. I was convinced this was a good one about ten minutes after receiving it.

This book is about 10 pages of licks you could probably find off the internet and is an extreme ripoff for $17. It teaches you absolutely nothing about improvising mandolin solos and the title is entirely misleeding. Using premade licks is not improvisation. Don't bother buying this book but instead check out websites such as [...]. This book should only be worth about $5 seeing as it is not even printed up with a binding but rather a plastic comb.

This book contains some good information (scales, arpeggios, double stops, chop chords, chord progressions) and several sample licks. What it does not do, however, is actually tell the player "How to" apply all of this information. As an advanced beginner at the mandolin, this was not helpful at all. There is no real instruction on improvising, but perhaps instructing on how to improvise is a paradox.