Welcome to my 4th blog post for my mandolin in-depth project!
Mentorship:
- What has been your most difficult mentoring challenge so far? Why?
I think one of the challenges in the mentorship so far is finding ways to connect better. We are different ages and listen to different music. This can make it difficult to find common types of music to talk about which makes it difficult for my mentor to suggest songs I could learn that he thinks I would enjoy. It has also made it a little more difficult to get to know my mentor because I wasn’t sure what to talk about other than the mandolin. This wasn’t a huge challenge for learning because we were able to focus a lot on the mandolin. Although was definitely one of the challenges when we were getting more comfortable with each other. We have been working on this in different ways now. One of the ways we have been doing this is by sharing different music with each other. He was able to introduce me to a band from Vancouver which I really enjoyed and I showed him a mandolin player whose music I really enjoy. This gives us an opportunity to learn more about each other and to try new kinds of music.
- What is working well? Why?
I think one aspect of my mentorship that is working well right now is how my mentor and I work together to make a plan for what I want to learn next. This is going well because I am able to bring the skill or song I want to learn to my mentor. He then helps guide me to resources and exercises so I can get started. The first reason I think this helps my learning is that it gives me the ability to choose what I am learning. Though sometimes he will give me different routes to try than I would think of, we always learn the skills that I bring to the meetings. Another reason I think this works well is that it makes it my responsibility to choose the pace of learning. I am able to plan out my time and set deadlines for myself based on how I am feeling about my progress. This helps me learn because I feel less pressure about quickly moving through the skills I am struggling with and allows me to move faster with the skills that are coming easily.
- What could be working better? How can you make sure this happens?
I think one aspect of our meeting that we could work on is slowing down a bit. Usually, we move quickly through the different questions I have. This can cause some information to get mixed up for me. I think an easy solution for this would be to ask more questions during the meetings as well as take a moment to write down any important parts and instructions for exercises. I also think that I could do better at bringing more skills I want to learn next to the meetings. Usually, we will discuss what I am currently working on and then later come up with the next steps. I think if I came with a written list of songs and skills I want to learn next to the meetings, my mentor would be able to help me more. I would be able to better communicate exactly what it is I want to learn and why. This could give my mentor a better understanding of what I want to learn and give him an idea of other songs I could learn in the future related to those.
Learning Updates:
My learning has gone well in the past couple of weeks. In the first week after my last blog post, I continued to work on the fiddle tune and started to get quite comfortable with it. My mentor was able to find a simplified version for me which has been even better to learn because I understand it better.
New version of the fiddle tune I’m learning: caledonian_laddie_mandolin_tabs
I also had a meeting with my mentor where he explained how some of the major scales worked on the mandolin. This was super helpful because I was able to learn just a couple of different patterns and move them around to form different scales. This gave me a better understanding of the fiddle tune I was working on as well as the layout of the mandolin. I had to take a break the week after that because I was on a trip away from my mandolin but this week, I have been looking for what I want to learn next as I finish up the fiddle tune. The first new skill I want to try is strumming harmonies. On the mandolin, you can choose whether to strum or pick a tune so I would like to learn the chords for the fiddle tune that I learned how to pick. I also want to start looking for another tune to learn in the mandolin books that my mentor gave me. While I work on that, I will continue to practice scales and really focus on the ones in the tunes I’m learning.
Thanks for reading!