Blues Mandolin and Beyond

I receive letters such as this periodically, but this has been one of the nicest so far. It definitely adds value to what I do. Thanks Josh!

Hi, M. Rictcher

I have a little story to share with you. I am teaching music in a high shcool in Québec, Canada (that explain my poor english sorry). But I’m not a musician. Actually, I am just an ordinary elementary school teacher who knows a little bit about playing guitar… Last year, while teaching how to play some basic chords to the kids, I got frustrated to realized that they were not able to do it. To me it was so darn easy… So I decided to put myself at their level. I got home and went to the internet so I could pick one intrument that i didn’t know nothing about. After a couple of hours, I chose the mandolin. Well I made up my mind when I saw your video of you playing Voodoo Child. Every students of mine saw your perfomance too. Now, I’m teaching the mandolin and the guitar at school. And that’s because of you. I just want to thanks you for sharing your talent with the rest of us.

As a teacher, I know how it feel to be a model for other people and in what concerns the mandolin, you were mine. I just tought you might like to know.

Well that’s it. Have a good day

Josh

Mandolin buddy Adam Paul of Houston, Texas requested recently for me to do an instructional video on incorporating octaves into mandolin soloing.  The following are Parts 1 and 2 of that video.  Instructional tab to come.

I’ve recently become National resonator happy and have become owner to a couple of vintage Triolians:  a 1929 Triolian mandolin and a 1933 or 34 Triolian tenor guitar.  I’ll post more on them later.  For now here are some videos.

Pink Floyd has been one of my top bands for a very long time.  Whether it be the Syd Barret era Floyd, the Rogers Waters era, or the Waters-less era, Pink Floyd is still one of my favorites.  The Wall truly stands as a masterpiece within the band’s catalog and I can safely I say I learned every guitar part and solo from that album.  David Gilmour, much like Clapton, has the incomparable ability to say more with less.

I arranged Goodbye Blue Sky for octave mandolin some time back.  It works well for standard scale mando too.  The challenge of this fairly easy piece is two fold: 1)  try to achieve a ringing sound throughout to more closely achieve the open guitar string sound of the Gilmour’s playing and 2) achieve the steady “pulse” or “heartbeat” of the original.  It’s steady but never rushed.

Tab is available both in TEF and PDF on THE TRANSCRIBABLE page.