Week 1 Progress Report

No self-respecting self-teacher works without some kind of curriculum, and since I have a modicum of self respect, I am starting off my studies with a book/CD/VHS combo. This is the set of learning tools we bought at the same time we acquired the instrument. The book by Bert Casey is redundantly titled Mandolin Primer for Beginners and begins by describing the parts of the mandolin, what to do with your left and right hands, and how to tune--pretty much what a primer should do. It then moves into simple exercises and songs in the key of G.

WARNING: In this entry I'm going to publish some stuff that only a music teacher (and the family of a beginning music student) should ever hear. I recorded myself playing a few of the exercises that I had been practicing during the first week of my mandolin studies, and I'm going to post those recordings here.

The first real exercise is the G Major Scale. Here it is in all its glory. I got a little cocky on the way back down.

The first song in the book is Yankee Doodle, but I didn't actually record that one--here's Oh Susanna, the second song. I should get extra credit for this one--Mr. Casey didn't publish the music for the B part of this song.

The next song is Worried Man Blues. I'd never heard this one before, or at least I didn't recognize or remember it.

The last song I worked on during the first week was Wildwood Flower.

That's actually a lot of stuff to work on during the first week of learning a new instrument, especially for someone with limited (but not totally nonexistent) musical background. I realize now that I did the same thing when I was learning guitar--I want to keep going--to learn new stuff before I master the old stuff.

So now I need to spend time cleaning these songs up and memorizing them. I'll try to restrain myself from moving on, even though those hammer-ons a few pages up look really interesting.