Bluegrass Mandolin for Beginners - Learn to Play with Step-by-Step Lessons | Perfect for Practice, Performances & Jam Sessions

Butch Baldassari's instructional materials are fantastic, and this is the place to start with them. He really teaches you to play the mandolin--I mean, how to get good tone playing both lead and rhythm, and how to take advantage of the way tunes lay on the instrument by including double-stops, slides, drone notes, and so on. The two You Can Play Bluegrass Mandolin DVD's, his Bluegrass Mandolin Workshop DVD, and his book/cd combo on 30 Fiddle Tunes for Mandolin are my favorites of the many books and DVD's I have worked with. But be aware that even this one, the most basic of Butch's material, while it does start with the basics, moves pretty quickly to more advanced instruction (well, advanced beginner/early intermediate anyway). The lead he teaches for Nine Pound Hammer, for instance, is pretty challenging to play at full tempo, and would be a perfectly respectable lead to break out in any jam session. That is what makes Butch great--like I said, he really teaches you the instrument. But unless you have already played some mandolin, or have some experience picking fiddle tunes on the guitar to where you're comfortable getting that right hand going fast and relaxed, you probably need to move more slowly, or at least include some more beginner-level material with this so you don't get frustrated. True beginners might want to pair this DVD with Steve Kaufman's Get Started on the Mandolin to have some more basic material to work with.