Mike Marshall Lessons

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'm still enjoying the Mike Marshall mandolin lessons very much. I've been continuing through the intermediate track, and practicing his tunes and techniques a lot.

I also mentioned that I hadn't yet worked up the nerve to send him a video of me playing. That's one of the key points of the program - if you submit a video of your playing of a lesson, Mike will review it and respond with a video with his feedback/pointers/critiques. I've been thinking about it, and finally progressed from "I should really do that" to "I'm *going* to do that."

Once that decision was made, there was the question of "how?" How to video myself, how to get it in the right file format, etc., etc. I spent most of an evening working out these details.

My best video camera turned out to be my iPhone. I did a few takes of "Whiskey Before Breakfast" (a great fiddle tune), then transferred the file to my laptop and got ready to submit. Oops, not so fast - the video showed me upside-down. Googling showed that yes, it's a known problem, and no, there's no easy way to flip it around.

Another take of "Whiskey Before Breakfast". Try to upload...wrong file format. Find a freeware program to convert video file formats. Try to upload...no, the file is too big. Sigh.... Find that the freeware video conversion program can also compress files. Success!

I waited, unsure of how quickly he turned these videos around - and then a week later I got an e-mail notifying me that a video response was ready. *Gulp*

I went and watched it, and was *very* pleasantly surprised. He must do a ton of these video exchanges, but he gave me very personal and very un-rushed feedback. He asked me for some background into my playing and what I hope to get out of the mandolin, gave me some good feedback, and then demonstrated a whole bunch of options for ways to embellish "Whiskey Before Breakfast." It was kinda boggling to actually get feedback from a world-class player.

I immediately made a second video ("Red Haired Boy"), and got a response this morning with more good feedback. You can guess that I'll be submitting my next video very soon.

These traditional fiddle tunes are a lot of fun, and I've learned a good number of them. Another nice feature of the Mike Marshall program is PDF tabs and MP3 backing tracks of these tunes. So I can print out the tabs and play along with a guitar accompaniment. It would be nice to play with a real guitar player - and I happen to have one in the house...so maybe I'll recruit her and see what happens.

Anyway, I can't recommend this program highly enough.