ISBN 9781609749989. You Can Teach Yourself Mandolin is written as a teach-yourself text with play-along examples and tunes on the companion recording. In the author's word, "It is aimed at helping you get started immediately on your way to mandolinhood by giving you the basics of the mandolin and mandolin playing." With this informal, often humorous text, Dix Bruce will guide you step-by-step through the basics of learning this versatile instrument. Learn all about accompanying yourself and others, common chords and useful strums, reading simple melodies, playing a colorful assortment of mandolin folk songs, and more. All musical examples and tunes are written in bothstandard notation and tablature. Diagrams of all the principal chords used on the mandolin are shown in the Chord Appendix, making this book a particularly useful study aid for the beginning mandolinist. Illustrated with drawings and photographs of vintage instruments. This book has accompanying audio and video.

ISBN 9781609742577. This encyclopedia is designed to provide mandolin players with a wide variety of chords in different voicings. This book is intended as both a starting point of learning chord voicings and patterns, as well as a dictionary of common mandolin chords. Each key section includes the first position scale for that key, as well as the chord formula and notes for each chord. If you want to learn to be a bluegrass rhythm player it helps to have a guide or 'map' to take you through the initial learning stage. This book provides a small but powerful set of starter chords used in this style of music. Once these chords are learned, you'll be able to jam with other musicians in no time. These are the same chords used by greats like Bill Monroe, Doyle Lawson, David Grisman and hundreds of other bluegrass players in this genre. While there are only a few chords presented in the "map" section, they form the foundation of bluegrass mandolin and with them you can play literally thousands of songs in every key. Chords are presented by key.