Customer Reviews

Mel Bay A Guide to Octave Mandolin & Bouzouki

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'd recommend this book highly for the more advanced player. I've been working on "Hickey's Reel" (possibly the easiest piece in the book) and I'm finding the melody portion to be a real boot camp for learning ornamentation. The accompaniment is somewhat easier and offers some much more interesting alternatives to just strumming or playing arpeggios. The arrangements sometimes call for very wide stretches or other fingerings that are physically more difficult than seems necessary, so I've found myself rewriting some of them into something that's musically similar, but easier on the hand. This probably would be less of an issue for someone with larger hands or a smaller instrument.
The accompanying CD is enjoyable for listening, but not as friendly as a learning tool as it might be. The tunes are played a bit too fast for anyone who's still learning to play them, and there's no slowed down version. Also, there's no count-off, so you'll just have to jump in as best you can if you want to play along.
Although most of the tunes are Celtic, McGann gives very short shrift to the GDAD tuning, explaining that he prefers the GDAE tuning. While he presents valid arguments for this choice (and it probably makes sense for the less traditional pieces), it may be a bit of a disappointment for traditional Celtic players who think of GDAD as the standard tuning.
"A Guide to the Octave Mandolin & Bouzouki" is a good choice for someone who wants to learn advanced techniques or nontraditional uses of the instrument. Less advanced players or those who want a more traditional Celtic perspective might do better to start with Zan McLeod's "How to Play the Irish Bouzouki" from Homespun Tapes.

This book is great if you have picked up an octave mandolin as a 2nd or 3rd instrument.

It helps you explore OM techniques (accompaniment especially) thru songs. This is not a lesson book, it is a song book that explores different OM playing styles.

The CD is well recorded and good to listen to on its own. The only instrument on the CD is an OM. Melody in the left channel, accompaniment in the right.

its a nice book and has lots of great info about an instrument that most people have no idea about. has great alt tunings, rhythm patterns, and picking patterns. the problem with it is it is for really advanced players. the tabs and songs are intense, to say the least

If you're an intermediate mandolin player don't buy this book, like other reviewers have stated it is strictly targeted to advanced players.

The transcription of both melody and specially accompaniment seem to attempt to capture the fluidity and richness of the actual live interpretations, making every measure forever changing and evolving from the last one...since there's so little repetition and the pacing of the songs is so fast, both tab and notation are really hard to either learn or follow along.

The cd its actually pretty good, and I would give that four stars, but if I wanted a music cd I would've bought one...I really just wanted to learn the instrument.

Well, I thought that this book + DVD was a tutorial, but it is just a compilation of songs with attached music notation and tablature instead. No lessons.
Too advanced for me, but the title of the book is misleading.

This book has good info on tunings and musical scores for many songs. It also has a great CD with some beautiful music played by a bouzouki master. But I was expecting some chord charts for the Irish tuning. Not a chord to be found in the entire book. I thought Mel Bay was the chord chart man. Not in this book. If you need bouzouki chords, better look elswhere.

The book arrived from Amazon with no CD in it even though it is advertised as having a CD with it. I contacted Amazon and they replaced it with another book at no cost. However, the book still did not have a CD in it. So I contacted John McGann and he arranged for Mel Bay to send a replacement with a CD. It has arrived just now so I am able to give a brief review.

John McGann's general introduction and introduction to every tune is very thorough and informative. However, it would have been nice to have had a bit more information about the style of playing even though ornamentation on the octave mandolin is well covered. I found that there is a sameness to the tunes perhaps because the harmonic accompaniment is on an octave mandolin as well. I felt that there could have been more variation in tone and style. However, John's blues and jazz compositions at the end are far more interesting and varied and gave a lift to the overall impression of the book and CD.

The CD that comes with this is awesome! Haunting and compelling.

I see the book itself, however, as a waste of time. It's almost like the authors were showing off. It's just songs, no instruction.

The level is advanced. So advanced that anybody capable of playing these songs would have no need of this book! Which is why the title, "A Guide To . . ." is misleading at best. It's certainly not a method.

On the plus side, the CD that comes with it was done right. You can isolate the melody on the right track or the accompaniment on the left track. Many of these books have CDs whose audio tracks do not have the lead melody and the accompaniment separated on their own tracks, but this one does.

Note: all the songs in here can be played by mandolin as well. The bouzouki tuning they're using is GDAD, so in case you think this book is going to be spoilt by a bunch of songs possible on the bouzouki but not the mandolin, that's not the case. The octave mandolin can play everything in here (melodies and accompaniments), though the bouzouki can't.