Bill Monroe Style Mandolin Improvisation Course   

Photo By John Malinowski If  you travel to a foreign country, you can buy a travel guide, a map and a phrase book and head out on your own, or you can find someone who knows the language, geography, history, and customs and ask them for help.  The second option is usually the easiest, most efficient and informative.  The same can be true of learning stylistic music.  If you want to learn to play the mandolin like Bill Monroe, the banjo like Earl Scruggs, the fiddle like Kenny Baker, or the guitar like Tony Rice, you could transcribe solos on your own and work to analyze the style, or you could seek out someone who has done the work and already captured the essence of the style.      Capturing the essence of a style doesn’t not mean simply learning note-for-note song transcriptions any more than memorizing the Gettysburg Address is equivalent to orating like Abraham Lincoln. Being a stylistic player doesn’t equate to being a mimic.  You may start with mimicking, bu