101 Mandolin Tips

by Fred Sokolow

(Mandolin). Ready to take your playing to the next level? Renowned fretted instrument performer and teacher Fred Sokolow presents valuable how-to insight that mandolin players of all styles and levels can benefit from. The text, photos, music, diagrams, and accompanying audio provide a terrific, easy-to-use resource for a variety of topics, including playing tips, practicing tips, accessories, mandolin history and lore, practical music theory, and much more! Online audio is accessed at halleonard.com/mylibrary

80 pages, Paperback

First published November 7, 2014

Reviews

[Altivo Overo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not an actual instructional book, but rather a collection of tips and hints. Most of them are quite useful and interesting, and some have audio examples available to go with them. As little more than a beginner, I found about a third of the tricks of immediate use and a good part of the remainder will come in handy eventually. I would not describe this as "essential" reading for every mandolin player, but it is certainly of potential value to all but the most experienced.

[Yousseif Abdellatif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fred Sokolow uses 101 Mandolin Tips to show that no matter how sophisticated a regime looks, its core survival mechanism is always fear of the non-conformist.

[Paul · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is pretty bad. The book with the subtitle, "stuff all the pros know and use" has literally no tips from any of the pros. It starts off with super basic things like how many strings are on a mandolin. Not what I expected from a book of tips from the pros.

After that's done, you get taught to use terrible practice habits like always playing a piece from beginning to end. This is pretty much the definition of inefficient practice, and in my lessons I spend a lot of time teaching my students not to do this.

Then he goes on to say you should practice scales while watching tv because "the mind just gets in the way". Seriously, I don't know how this got published. There are so many things in play when you play scales - tone, technique, tension, rhythm, etc., and you won't improve any of them if you're not engaged with what you're playing. Straight up, if you follow these tips you will sabotage your own progress as a mandolinist.

The ending is just a list of famous mandolin players. Interesting enough, but also nothing close to tips from the pros.

If you want to learn mandolin, get Don Julin's "Mandolin for Dummies". It's really good. Or go to mandolincafe.com. Tons of great tips there. But don't read this.