I play mandolin as a (very) amateur musician. It’s a fun hobby, mostly old-time fiddle tunes and some bluegrass and Celtic. From time to time, I go to camps or workshops to try to get better. I was at one this past week with Mike Marshall, who is a very famous and accomplished mandolin player.
You get a lot of access at these, so I could ask pretty much any question I wanted. I’ve gotten a bit stalled in my playing (I’ve been playing for about 6 years now). We all know the feeling, you get to some plateau that is between “raw beginner” and “really expert”. In “raw beginner”, the path is fairly clear - there are known skills you need, techniques to learn them, and a bunch of very clear, hard work to do. By the time you’re an expert, you’ve figured it all out, by definition, right? The hard part is what some folks call the “wilderness” in the middle - there are lots of things you *could* do, but it’s not clear which ones you *should* do.
So I wanted to ask Mike this question. He knows probably as much about mandolin as anyone alive, and he’s been playing professionally for years, so I should be able to get the whole answer from him, right?
Except that I found I couldn’t - not his fault, I actually couldn’t even find a way to ask the question that felt meaningful. Mostly the forms I came up with were variations of “should I practice this specific thing” (sure, you could) or “can you give me a complete roadmap to being you” (not really). Really hard to ask what is essentially “I’m ready for my own personal journey, can you give it to me"?”
However, I did get a lot out of the camp. I got a strong sense of how he is as a musician (and his wife, Caterina Lichtenberg, who was there and is also highly accomplished). I watched lots of folks with stronger skills than me, and got ideas from them, a sense of what’s possible, maybe from time to time an idea of how they are approaching similar problems.
It strikes me that, to some degree, maybe these little letters are something similar. Ideas, and projects, examples, maybe a glimpse of how I might look at a problem, but it’s not really possible to get a personal, complete path from them (not to compare myself to someone like Mike, even in my own domain). That feels right - at some point, you have to steer your own ship, if it’s going to be your journey.
Oh no, bummer! I totally recommend asking a pro "can you hear me play for a little while and suggest what I should work on next?". It unlocked my progress.
When I did that with Tony Trischka, he identified (correctly) note separation as the reason I wasn't sounding as good as I could. Consistency between notes is key to sounding smooth instead of rough: consistency of volume, of starting time, and duration. This kind of work is like working on yourself to be better in business -- getting consistency of execution so you're not burning out, you're not different people on different days, you're making your decisions the same way, etc.
You might also want to work on repertoire: learning other people's solos note for note. It's great ear training to do this by ear, but tab works in a pinch. This is like case studies in business school -- you think about what the situation was (what chord were they playing over here? from what melody note to what melody note?) and can then extract plays and ideas for your own use (this is a good two bar A phrase for songs where the melody starts on the 5 note before it goes to the IV chord).
And, when in doubt, play with other people often. You can read all the business books you like, but getting amongst it teaches so many more lessons. As a learner musician at home, you can stop and start and speed up and slow down, maybe even pause and redo a bar -- but not if there's a band that'll be on the next chord in the song in one bar's time.