by Wendy Anthony
The Tune:
Hangman’s Reel is played as a Breakdown in Old-Time jams. Old-time fiddlers play Hangman’s Reel in “cross-tuning” AEAE, utilizing a dark droning sound, which takes a bit more work to achieve a similar effect on the mandolin. This tune is likely of French Canadian origin, based on Hanged Man’s Reel (aka Le Reel du Pendu, or Reel of the Hanged, which is played in AEAC# tuning), & associated with various legends about a man, condemned to be hanged, who is offered a reprieve if he could …

by Michael B. Gregory
As promised, here’s another great reel you can play after (or before) George White’s from our last issue:
This one is another very common session tune called The Silver Spear. Alan Ng’s wonderful database of Traditional Irish Music lists more than 20 recordings of it as well as a dozen or more books that contain printed music for the tune. The dates of these recordings span a period of more than 50 years.
It also happens that The Silver Spear appears in a very recent (February 2009) Mel …

ENTER TODAY! THIS CONTEST HAS ENDED. Thanks to all who entered.
Enter for your chance to win a Michael Kelly Legacy Elegante Mandolin! Sweepstakes ends June 15, 2009 at 11:59 pm ET. This contest brought to you by Mel Bay Publications, Inc. with the help of our friends at Michael Kelly Guitar Company. Here is a description of this amazing instrument from the Michael Kelly website.
A Michael Kelly masterpiece, that is how you might describe the Legacy Eleganté. This top of the line model has every upgrade available in appearance and …

by Nate Lee
“The Minstrel Boy” was written by Thomas Moore (1779-1852) who set it to the melody of an old Irish aire called “The Moreen.” It is believed that he wrote it in honor of three friends who participated in the 1798 rebellion of the United Irishmen. One died in prison, one was wounded, and the other was captured and hung. This song was popular during the Civil War with the Irish-American soldiers, primarily on the Union side.
This song holds some special significance for me because it is the …

by Seth Austen

For this issue of Mandolin Sessions, we’ll play Sourwood Mountain. This is a classic old time fiddle tune and song, recorded by numerous artists. Old time fiddlers generally play this tune in cross tuning. I really enjoy using cross tunings on mandolin. If you haven’t tried these tunings previously, check out my December 2008 column where we played Breaking Up Christmas in open tuning.
Sourwood Mountain is often played in the key of A, using AEAE, low to high. This is one of the most commonly used open …

by Joe Mendel

Like many of us Graham McDonald started playing guitar in his teen years, and the mandolin soon caught his ear. He has worked in music stores and had various other employment over the years, most jobs having something to do with music. He now has been building fretted instruments for nearly 25 years, in Australia and has written two excellent books on instrument construction; The Bouzouki Book and The Mandolin Project.
Joe Mendel: Hi Graham. What made you decide to take up playing music in the first place?
Graham …

by Michael B. Gregory
Welcome to the 16th article on Beginning Irish Mandolin in this webzine! That means we’ve been contributing for a full three years to this point. If you haven’t looked at the back issues, which go back to June 2006, I urge you to do so before you attempt the reel we’re introducing here. It is quite a bit more challenging than any of our previous tunes but I think you’ll profit greatly by taking the effort to learn it. It’s called George White’s Favourite (GWF) although …

by Ted Eschliman

Continuing Lydian
We want to continue from our last entry, so if you haven’t read the February issue, it’s critical to start there, or none of this issue will mean much to you: Lydian Tracks Pt. 1; A path to Modal improvisinghttp://archive.mandolinsessions.com/feb09/Eschliman.html. Remember we looked at multiple closed finger patterns based on a major scale, and that was certainly a great place to start. We altered one note, raising the 4th scale degree to create the Lydian mode, but another tactic you can use is to apply the …