Register here.
“After buying six mandolins and umpteen books…I am convinced your course is best $100 I have invested in my mandolin journey to date. Finally, I’m getting the discpline I need with your exercises to learn scales, arpeggios, double stops, fingering techniques, learn the fretboard (the essential tools I need)…and most importantly to learn how those things fit into playing tunes.”—Rick D., Bluegrass Mandolin 101 student
“I have to say that making everything available online is a great convenience for me. Being able to stop and return to a more challenging exercise or a newer phrase is a great for learning. I also really appreciate your availability to answer questions offline. This is a great course, and I feel as though I’m improving daily because of it.”—Joe C., Bluegrass Mandolin 101 student
This course is intended to help the aspiring mandolinist build up repertoire and find ways of creating new solos over commonly played swing and jazz standards; it’s also designed in the hope that it will encourage students to get out and jam with other players!
Each week, we’ll look at four swing/jazz standard tunes with a particular concept in mind—the blues, ii/V/Is etc. Students will be given lead sheets (in standard notation and tablature) for each song, as well as a few exercises to help them learn more about the fretboard and start incorporating new ideas into their solos. Concepts and tunes will be taught during the class session, and all tunes will be revisited during Saturday practice sessions in a “jam session” format, where each song is played several times though, and students have the opportunity to try out some of the week’s concepts on the tunes (with guidance from Matt).
Classes meet every Wednesday in July (except for the first session, which will be Thursday, July 6, to avoid the July 4th holiday) at 9 pm eastern time. There will also be 45-minute review sessions every Saturday morning at 12:15 pm eastern time.
The course fee is $125.
WEEK 1 (July 6)
Fairly Simple Progressions
Using Chord Tones
A Few Scales and Patterns
Careless Love
Lady Be Good
All of Me
On the Sunny Side of the Street
WEEK 2 (July 12)
Blues
Blues Scales & Licks
Moving Chords Over Blues Progressions
Blues in the Closet
Now’s the Time
Don’t Get Around Much Anymore
Do Nothing ’Til You Hear from Me
WEEK 3 (July 19)
ii-V-Is
Mixolydian and Dorian Scales
More Melodic Patterns
How High the Moon
Stompin’ at the Savoy
Broadway
But Not For Me
WEEK 4 (July 26)
More complex progressions
Chord Tone Exercises
Hello Dolly
Night and Day
I’ll See You in My Dreams
It Had to Be You
Register here.
See the Bluegrass Jamming Curriculum
See the Scale and Arpeggio Intensive Curriculum
The View From Here
Walking on the Moon
Latitude
Music du jour
Copyright - Matt Flinner - All right Reserved
Would you give keys for the Week one songs?
I hope that printed materials are NOT the hard-to-read white-on-black that this page is. Please, just use regular black-on-white. Thanks!
Hi Christine,
Sure thing!
“Lady Be Good” will be in G
“All of Me” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street” will be in C
“Careless Love” will be in F
Don’t worry—all of the PDFs are standard black-on-white so they should be easy to read! I know the white on black is a little weird—sorry about that!
Let me know if you have any other questions. See you in class on Thursday!
Thanks,
Matt
I just got an email saying that the class starts NEXT week, on the 12th. But here it has it starting today, the 6th. Please clarify.
Hi Christine,
Sorry for the confusion! The webinar software sends out automatic reminders before each class session. These are sent out one week before, one day before and one hour before each session. Since Session 1 was on a Thursday and Session 2 is on a Wednesday, the one-day reminder for Session 1 came out the same time as the one-week reminder for Session 2. Sorry about that! The schedule should normalize from this point on. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks!
Matt Flinner