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Rating: 
Summary: It's sad when the CD is the worse part of the package
Review: I assume that since you're interested in this book that you've bought similar book/CD combinations to study with. As you know, the first track on all of these kinds of CD's is a set of notes to tune to. Now, on mandolin you're tuning a pair of strings which are set to the same note. Would you say that it's a bad thing if the first note you hear is not only out of tune, but the two strings are out of tune to each other? Yes, it is. Throughout the CD the person playing the demonstrations flubs notes (they buzz, they're accidentally muted and so on) and his high E strings are quite often out of tune to each other. His low G strings don't so much ring as "plunk". Several times throughout the CD his instrument is out of tune to itself. In the chapters on "chop" chords he lets his chords ring way to long. The CD examples are NOT chops, they're short duration chords. A chop should sound like "Chunk Chunk Chunk", not "Bling Bling Bling" If I was to place the playing on this CD in a mandolin contest I'd say that it's solidly intermediate level playing, but certainly not advanced. Listen to Chris Thile to hear how clearly played notes should sound. The only reason I give the book 3 stars is because the actual content is pretty good. There are many places to get this information, but this is a good reference to have a bunch of scale and arpeggio information in the same place. His two note chop positions are really usefull, he just doesn't play them as true chops on the CD. So consider this book with a grain of salt. It's decent for a workout book, but it works best as a suppliment to a good teacher or to other books. I wouldn't take this book's CD as an example of the proper way to play.
Rating:
Summary: It's sad when the CD is the worse part of the package
Review: I assume that since you're interested in this book that you've bought similar book/CD combinations to study with. As you know, the first track on all of these kinds of CD's is a set of notes to tune to. Now, on mandolin you're tuning a pair of strings which are set to the same note. Would you say that it's a bad thing if the first note you hear is not only out of tune, but the two strings are out of tune to each other? Yes, it is. Throughout the CD the person playing the demonstrations flubs notes (they buzz, they're accidentally muted and so on) and his high E strings are quite often out of tune to each other. His low G strings don't so much ring as "plunk". Several times throughout the CD his instrument is out of tune to itself. In the chapters on "chop" chords he lets his chords ring way to long. The CD examples are NOT chops, they're short duration chords. A chop should sound like "Chunk Chunk Chunk", not "Bling Bling Bling" If I was to place the playing on this CD in a mandolin contest I'd say that it's solidly intermediate level playing, but certainly not advanced. Listen to Chris Thile to hear how clearly played notes should sound. The only reason I give the book 3 stars is because the actual content is pretty good. There are many places to get this information, but this is a good reference to have a bunch of scale and arpeggio information in the same place. His two note chop positions are really usefull, he just doesn't play them as true chops on the CD. So consider this book with a grain of salt. It's decent for a workout book, but it works best as a suppliment to a good teacher or to other books. I wouldn't take this book's CD as an example of the proper way to play.
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