Hope you are well and enjoying life, health and music!
My news: This week, I am doing a lot of work in the mandolin chords database of theMandolinTuner. My focus is now the common chords (major, minor, diminished and augmented) and my target is to release an article every day in order to have all common chords covered in the next two or three weeks. The latest articles I have released concern Edim and Fdim and you can see more here:
The How-to Mandolin Chords articles have been completely redesigned to become more useful, so now each one contains the basic music theory to understand the particular chord, a complete mandolin chord chart with all variants and three chord variants described in detail, i.e. with instructions where to place each finger and what note this will produce. See a sample of this new design here:
Hope you like it! Not all existing articles have been transferred to the new design, this will happen gradually in the next two weeks. Once all texts are ready, my next step will be to add audio for each mandolin chord, to make sure you can verify that you play each chord in the right way. This is much work, but I think it is worth it!
Other big news concern my participation in a mandolin orchestra. I will be playing the octave mandolin and I am very happy to play again in a big group. Note that this mandolin orchestra is a big one, with more than ten mandolins and it includes also guitars, mandolas, a cello and a double bass! This is really exciting! More on this orchestra will follow shortly!
My focus on music is now J.S. Bach and Callace.
I am now studying a Double from J.S. Bach Partital No.1 in B minor, BWV 1002 for Violin, expect to see a YouTube video and a recording posted soon. How soon? I can not promise anything, as music from J.S. Bach is famous for being very difficult to play with accuracy, but I am doing my best to have this ready in the following weeks. The Double is included in the latest release of theMandolinTune Hall of Fame member Chris Thile, Here is a link to the CD in Amazon and iTunes:
I am also focusing on Callace music, and I have selected Mandolin Concerto No.2, Op.144: I. Maestoso as my next music to study and perform. I like this piece, it is so Italic, I feel it is going to be a journey back to the roots of mandolin virtuosity! I discovered this piece of music recently after I purchased a performance of the Callace concertos from Alison Stephens (1 Mar 1970 – 10 Oct 2010) and is very nice. Here is a link to the CD in Amazon:
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