A third flush of camellia flowers

I've been reading about the process of learning mandolin on the forums of mandolin cafe from a bunch of folk who have been before me, and had enough interest to pass on some tips. The first tip that struck me as useful was to actually know the piece that you are trying to play, and I was reminded how poorly I knew some of the tunes in the my Hal Leonard Mandolin Method Book 1. Much of the material is folksy or bluegrass, neither of which genre is particularly familiar to me.

So I sat down and actually listened to the accompanying CD, indeed I ripped it to my MP3 player and listened to it and - some of it I don't like much and much of it is played technically perfectly, with great detail and precision, but a total lack of soul. I realise that this is part of the teaching method, and that more advanced techniques bring the soul back in and add some enthusiasm and verve, but it left me uninspired.

I've tried stealing my youngest's guitar tunes, but they have a bad habit of hitting G and carrying on down. So I decided to buy myself a mandolin book that I could have a bit more fun with: Beatles For Mandolin. Lots of tunes that I know, that I enjoy and that I can listen to with pleasure. Like all Beatles transcriptions, I'm sure that there are detractors of these arrangements, but some are suitably simple and fun and they sound fine to my ears. For example, it so happens that the introduction to "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is very simple for mandolin, but instantly recognisable. I'm racing through "Here Comes the Sun" at the moment, but the instrumental parts are too hard for me.

The second tip that came to my notice is that the strike on the mandolin strings is an oblique one. With the arm still and rotating the wrist, the pick is stroked across the strings at an angle. This gives a much more mellow sound; sounding the two strings clearly.

Other suggestions were to make every fret count (In other words to avoid playing lazily and carelessly) and also to play loudly - I think because it amplifies the errors.

Anyway, the consequence of these ideas and a new book and some practice, is that I'm having more fun and improving. I also treated myself to a Snark multi-instrument tuner, which is a gorgeous little toy.