Steve Kaufman

Alternating Picking

Music for this workshop

Welcome friends. I've chosen this tune to kick off my partnership with this incredible young magazine. I wish Mandolin Magazine all the best of luck and thanks to Ginny for asking me aboard.

I thought that there are a lot of mandolin players who are also guitar players and what I would like to accomplish in my articles here would be to try to bridge the gap between the mando and the guitar.

One way I try to visualize the mando to the guitar is the mando's strings are the same. They are just upside down and backwards. If you can picture that you shouldn't have any transitional difficulties (just kidding)!

I want to cover many aspects of crossing between the instruments but I thought for this first issue we would get right into the picking part. I've transcribed Billy In The Low Ground for a few reasons. One of the reasons is that this tune is a very often-heard tune and it is easy to play on both instruments. This version is neat because the notes work on well on either guitar or mandolin. In fact this would be one of the first breaks I would do if taking a solo.

Some of you may have heard my lecture about the importance of down up swings (alternating picking) with the eighth notes. This is very important to master. It is not hard to master the alternating picking and when you do you will find yourself not thinking of the right hand at all, but of what the left hand can do.

The general rule is that all of the quarter notes, half notes and whole notes get a down swing and all of the eighth notes alternate. In fact the down-beat notes or the number notes of each measure are hit with a down swing and all of the "+" notes are hit with up swings.

Look at the first measure of the song excluding the pick up notes. You will find eight eighth notes in the measure. The first one is down and the last one is up. The last note in the next measure is a down -- it is a quarter note. If you alternate your picking and get to this note perched and ready to hit it on an up swing, you have messed up somewhere and you need to go back and work out the problem. Work it out now and don't think you can just come back to it later because this makes twice the work.

Have fun playing through this arrangement. If you have trouble with understanding the tab, look elsewhere in this magazine for tab definitions. If there are none, I will have it next time. Let me know what you want to see in this cross-over column. Topics I want to cover are going to be related to interpreting and associating guitar to mandolin and I know we'll have fun doing it.

Best always and see you down the road somewhere.

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