Mandolin Exercises For Dummies

by Don Julin

If you’re looking for an accessible practice-based book to improve your playing, you’ve come to the right place. Mandolin Exercises For Dummies focuses on the skills that players often find challenging and provides tips, tricks and plenty of cool exercises that will have you picking with the best of them (or at least much better than before!).

Access to downloadable audio files for all of the music and exercises found in the book provide you with a self-contained practice package. You can start off with a review of the basics — perfect if you’ve been away from the mandolin or you’ve finally picked one up — and then move onto:

Hundreds of exercises in various keys, positions, and rhythms Drills & tips to perfect your playing and maximize your practice time Technique building opportunities Scales, scale sequences, arpeggios, arpeggio sequences, and chords Full-length pieces to play along with 

Genres: Music, Nonfiction

221 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 2, 2012

Reviews

[Altivo Overo]

Quite possibly more than the beginning instrumentalist needs to know, this book is also a useful reference covering peripheral issues. Examples would be the chapter on selecting and buying an instrument, new or used; and the section on adjustments and repairs, including changing strings and resolving problems. A basic introduction to reading common music notation is included, as well as photos and instruction on holding and fingering the instrument.

Overall, this book is well worth having if you own and play a mandolin. However, despite the inclusion of progressive musical exercises and a selection of set pieces, I would say there are better instructional texts for beginners. A couple of examples for Celtic musicians would be Irish Mandolin Playing: A Complete Guide and A Complete Guide to Learning the Irish Mandolin.

[Xenophon]

If the classic "For Dummies" formula works for you, I highly recommend this guide to mandolin structure, playing, maintenance, and so forth.

Don Julin gets the job done.

[Brendan]

I'm using it to learn mandolin. Either I'm completely musically inept or one of the earliest audio tracks didn't match the figure it corresponded to in the book. A lot of information and I'm sure I didn't get most of it in the first read. Now I'm slowly going back and doing the exercises and sticking with them until I feel I'm ready to move on. We'll see how I do.

[Lisa]

This book is a step by step introduction to learning the mandolin. I had planned to teach myself by YouTube videos but when they moved too fast this book was the perfect remedy.

[Johann]

I was REALLY into playing the mandolin for a while. Then I got tired of the sound of it, saw a video of Andres Segovia playing classical guitar, and moved on.

[Natashya KitchenPuppies]

Pretty good, I just wish this one had come with the cd instead of having to download from the computer. I don't tend to play in front of my computer.
But if you were going to have a bunch of beginner books - it would be worth throwing this in too.

[Shaun Deane]

Fantasmic, practical, thorough - terrific resource