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In my case I did genres one at a time, not deliberately but because I get all passionate and obsessed.

If you cast to broadly, at least in my experience, there are too many diverse things to absorb. I think by narrowing the focus and going deep it makes it easier to absorb the all the details, when do the chords change, where they likely change to, the little tropes and phrases of the genre. However you do it, from notation or tabs or by ear, no pressure just do it a lot. In the car, at home, in the kitchen.Īnd play at it a lot.

Vintage bluegrass, or cowboy country songs, or Irish fiddle tunes, or Western Swing. Concentrate on a specific narrow genre of music for a while. I guess I'll keep doing what I do, but I'd sure love to be able to sit with a mandolin with the fiddle players one day and play those tunes without having to painfully sit at home and memorize them from sheet music one by one.īut at 63 with failing hearing I'm not sure I'll be able to pull it off. I have tried since I started playing to copy what I hear on records and have successfully learned two songs "Dead flowers" by the Stones (3 chords) and "Honky tonkin'" by Hank Williams (two chords). I can't play "Mary had a little lamb" by ear. I've recorded as a bassist on several CDs.īut no matter what instrument I play, I cannot hear a tune and play it. I've studied scales and chords on the bass and have played in numerous folkie, country, rockabilly and swing type bands as well as with singer songwriters. I've been playing for 49 years, starting on guitar, then electric bass, then upright bass. I tried listening to a fiddle tune on Youtube yesterday with the mandolin in hand and though I know the key, the basic scale and though I've heard the tune a dozen times, I could barely reproduce one note they were playing. I have had a mandolin in the house I've been baby-sitting for 20 years and I tried to learn fiddle before so I can read for mandolin in baby steps. I struggle immensely to hear when there is a chord change so I can accompany them but I'm amazed at how the others will sit there and having never heard a tune before, after two or three passes, can play it. The others play fiddles, accordions and there is sometimes one mandolin player. I recently started playing with a French-Canadian folk music group.