Lessons

Contact

Recordings

Links


 

 
 

Looking for a teacher?
If you have been wanting to learn how to play the mandolin or expand on what you already know ....and you live in the greater Treasure Valley area of Idaho...drop me an email and we can work out a lesson schedule.

Want to start a "family band"? I also teach beginning fiddle / violin, mandola, viola, octave violin, octave mandolin and guitar - flatpicking or fingerpicking. I teach multiple family members in your home or mine and teach on saturdays at Old Boise Guitar Co. in downtown Boise, Idaho.


Brief Bio

Bio and samples of two tunes

Mando stamp carved in wood by Becky Smith

 


Student materials: Posted info from lessons, handy charts and links

Pettine's Daily exercises to develope coordination between the hands. 
Chord formula chart
Swing chord forms - I Got Rhythm (in G). These are the 3 string chord forms that are so easy to move around the neck. Two ways to make dominant 7th chords are shown in the bridge's changes. Most of the chord forms used have dropped the root. For example a G Major7 consists of the 1,3,5,7 (g,b,d,f#) the form shown contains the 3,7,5 (b,f#,d). The root is implied by the other notes.
Mandolin fingerboard blanks handy to print out and make your own notes
Mandolin blues arpeggio pattern
 
musical notes - flash cards - for mandolin from Mandozine
Tabledit tunes search Tabledit Tablature Editor - free viewer
Links to other great sites - some with lesson material
"Chordmaps" Music Theory website well written, easy to understand basic theory 

December 2007 Jam in Texas at Nuevo Chile (next to the Texas Renaissance Festival site). See the video below of part of the jam.


Cantiga - Renaissance Festival Band


 


I had the great honor of sitting in with the David Grisman Quintet in Boise, Idaho, September 2003 at the Egyptian Theatre.


  In loving memory of Jinx Davis

In the summer of 2001 and 2002, I toured with the "Women In The Round". Click on the links below for photos.
Click on the limo to take the virtual tour of Women In The Round On The Road - 2002 tour Presented by Selia Qynn


"I can't help but wonder where I'm bound"
Here I am, whooping it up with David Blume, Ann Armstrong, Carolyn Hester, Selia Qynn. Lynn Langham, Linda Lowe, Aura Lee, and Carla Maywald. Waterstreet reunion, North Carolina, July 2001


Link to the Idaho Bluegrass Association

Stickerville - Weiser Friends of the Fiddle

See the Arthur Stern & Lawrence Smart collaboration mandolins
latest creation below - Mandola and Mandolin

Link for Lettie