I consider myself to be an advanced player, but I noticed some weaknesses in my playing.  Background: My band got a new banjo player, and he likes to do a lot of numbers in B, fast.  I noticed my playing was really crappy up there, and just sounded flat-out bad.  So, I went ahead and bought Niles' book, because it seemed targeted at the deficiencies in my playing.  I have always been turned off by Niles' posts on the MC, and their patronizing tone (my way is the right way, Grasshopper) but his book kicks butt.  In just one night, I am ripping it up in B (and other closed positions) way better than I ever have.  I also got some of his old Mandocrucian's Digests.  Really cool stuff- kinda reminds me of Mandolin World News.  So, I formulated a hypothesis- Niles was the equivalent of the east coast Dawg, in terms of trying to be an ambassador of the mandolin, but got really burnt and bitter after other pickers hopped on his bandwagon, and got more recognition and success.  Anywho, I really dig his book, and recommend it to anyone who plays fast bluegrass in keys like B and Bb.  Any one care to comment, either on Niles' books, or my hypothesis?

BGUTN is the most recent educational  resource I have used and even though I worked through just a bit of it, I've gotten more out of it than any other resources.  

I practiced some of the position drills for a few weeks and it did wonders for my ability to improve, albeit simple, breaks.  Really, I drifted in a really fast advanced circle at a BG jam a few weeks ago, got the nod, and actually whipped off something good enough that one guy said nice break at the end of the song.  And I consider myself a low intermediate at best.  It was all just position licks in that index finger on the root position.

Some complaints about the book-

1. The format is hard to read.  I photo copy and double the size of each page when I want to work on a page.  Also, the hand-written notation I find sometimes hard to make out where the notes are.  Certainly doesn't help my mediocre sight-reading skills.

2.  The position exercises where you do the same lick over each chord are great.  Then the book jumps to some completely written-out breaks.  Unless you a whiz at sight-reading, that's just too big a jump.  I'd have to spend hours doing arduous repetitive practice and commit the whole thing to memory before I play it all the way through.

What I'd like to see exercises where are licks are written out over chord changes, like four-measure parts of breaks.  Say a change like G G D G.  Write out position licks for that but don't make them the same for each measure; make the G lick lead to D and D lick back to G.  Then practice each four measure exercises over and over.  So you are effectively building bigger pieces of Lego to put in your toolkit.

I wish the book were reissued in a computer-typeset format and put in more incremental steps like a I mentioned but I doubt there's enough demand to make it worthwhile.

One thing I did get out of the book is using the position with the index on the root.  I think that's an easier position not to get lost.  I was trying to play out of the chop position a lot and found it less flexible.

Actually the next practice goal I was planing is to go back to and work on the drills in the chop position.  Then maybe skip around a bit.  Maybe I can build the skills to jump back and form.  I know there's some stuff later in the book about changing position I haven't touched on yet.

Sometimes a book also give you affirmation of what you already know but didn't know you know.  One song I play in E, Cannonball Blues, I do the break using the exact positions in BGUTN and didn't even know it.  I play out of second position, index finger on E and B over the E chord, index finger on A and E over the A chord.  Just like in the book.

Yeah, if you want to improve in any key, you have to learn to play closed positions.  

On NH, I think he's left the mando world a better place than he found it and that's a good thing.  It sounds like he's just ready to move on a bit.  I seem to remember a post a week or two ago that he's phasing out his teaching and I think he was dumping remaining copies of his books.  

--Last edited by kvk on 2007-11-08 13:25:05 --