Thanks for visiting! After many years of contemplatiing, I finally decided to buy a mandolin and teach myself how to play it. I set up this blog mainly in order to track how I am going. Feel free to follow my progress here too. (And yes, in case you're wondering, I did name the mando after Mycroft Holmes).
Here's an attempt at Blackberry Blossom. It's a transcription of Chris Thile doing it, which I found on the mandozine.com website (under Practice Tunes they have a whole heap of TablEdit files people have submitted - great resource) and the backing track is from this. Not sure how accurate it is as I can't find the original to be able to compare it, but hey, it's better than anything I'd come up with, so I figure it's worth practising. I'm not really playing it note for note anyway, as I get lost a few times (which you'll hear) and start improvising (rather poorly).
Before anyone points it out, yes, I know it's a bit rough and I'm probably trying to play it a bit too fast. I have also been practising this tune slowly and using a metronome on the backing track, so don't shoot me, I just like to challenge myself. Really annoyed that I stuffed up the little Pink Panther quote Thile managed to work into the B section... oh well.
For those who are counting, I've now been playing about 10 months. Sort of feel like I've plateaued a bit, but I haven't been practising as much as I'd like to lately. Too much jammin' not enough hard work :-)
