Learning to Play Mandolin Instruction with Tristan Scroggins
Photo By Natia Cinco
Tristan Scroggins started playing professionally in a full-time touring bluegrass band when he was only fourteen years old (2009). It was his father’s band—Jeff Scroggins and Colorado—and they loved to be on the road. Tristan said, “I grew up in a strange situation of touring all of the time. We started that band in my freshman year of high school and we played a lot. We were playing up to 300 days per year. My senior year I think I missed a hundred classes.”
Tristan stayed on the road with his father’s band for roughly ten years before making the decision to move from Colorado to Nashville in January of 2018. Although he was not interested in joining another heavily touring band when he arrived in Nashville, performance opportunities did arise. He said, “I pretty quickly started meeting people and playing with people. I played at the Opry with Molly Tuttle and then also did some Opry dates with Dailey and Vincent…which was cool.”
Tristan’s desire to stay at home led to him pursue income that did not require touring. He began writing articles for magazines, helped John Hartford’s daughter archive some of John’s material, played local gigs in and around Nashville, and started teaching mandolin lessons online. He said, “I had started using Patreon before the pandemic. It is a common thing now, but not many people were doing it back then.”
Patreon is a membership platform that provides tools for content creators to run a subscription service. Through Patreon, artists can receive payments from their fans, students, or “patrons.” Regarding his initial use of Patreon, Tristan said, “I was already posting videos of me playing so that I could focus on my internet presence on social media. A lot of people would ask if I had the transcriptions for the things that I was playing. I was transcribing a lot of it just for myself, so I had the transcriptions. I ended up putting those transcriptions behind the paywall at Patreon.”
Tristan adds that supporting an artist through Patreon doesn’t have to be a direct purchase transaction. He said, “At Patreon people can also generally support the content that you are making. For instance, I put out a lot of stuff for free and people can support me through Patreon because they know that it helps me to be able to continue to make videos and things like that.”
Currently, Tristan’s payment structure through Patreon involves monthly subscriptions presented at four levels. Each subscription level has a different price. The higher the subscription price, the more content the patron receives. The lowest level subscription is priced at $3 per month. For this price the patron simply believes in what Tristan is doing and wants to donate to the cause.
Every month Tristan creates four new videos showing him playing a tune on the mandolin. Each of these four video lessons demonstrate a different tune and each lesson includes downloadable tab and standard notation transcriptions of the tunes. He also provides backing tracks for these tunes. Additionally, Tristan produces two mandolin lessons per month that don’t directly teach tunes, but cover “broad stroke” concepts such as double stops, licks in G, etc. On top of that, Tristan has made available transcriptions of all of the mandolin solos from classic bluegrass albums such as Tony Rice’s Manzanita, Alison Krauss’ Every Time You Say Goodbye, the Lonesome River Band’s Carrying the Tradition, and Sierra Hull’s solos from Sturgill Simpson’s Cuttin’ Grass Volumes.
All of the material that Tristan produces each month is available to his Patreon patrons. How much material a patron can download depends on their subscription level. Each month, the $5 per month patron can select to download one of the four tunes that Tristan has posted that month. The $10 per month patron can download two tunes per month, plus they have access to one of the mandolin lessons. The $20 per month patron gets it all…four tunes per month, two lesson per month, and access to the album transcriptions.
One of the wonderful benefits that Tristan allows his patrons is “retroactive access” to all of the material that he has posted. This means that each new patron not only has access to the new tunes that Tristan puts out each month in the future, but they can also immediately have access to the tunes that Tristan has posted each month since he started this service. At the time of this writing, Tristan has been loading new tunes for 20 months. So, a new $5 patron can have access to 20 tunes. A $10 patron double that number of tunes, plus 20 lesson videos. A new $20 patron would immediately have access to 0ver 100 tune lessons and transcriptions, 40 mandolin lesson videos, and all of the album transcriptions that Tristan has published to date. That is a great deal!
Tristan’s Patreon subscribers are also offered discount prices on all of Tristan’s other instructional material. Recently he has written two transcription books of fiddle tunes, one on old-time tunes and the other on bluegrass fiddle tunes. In the old-time book he offers one arrangement of the tune whereas in the bluegrass fiddle tune book he offers three arrangements, each arranged for different skill levels. Tristan has more mandolin books planned for the future.
In addition to his Patreon offerings, Tristan teaches online group mandolin classes through the Nashville Acoustic Camps website (www.nashvilleacousticcamps.com—navigate to their zoom workshop section). These classes are offered in four-week segments with each four-week block costing $70. All of the sessions are recorded so that the participants can learn on their own schedule. Tristan teaches two different classes during each four-week block. His patrons at the $20 per month level are offered a $20 discount for his Nashville Acoustic Camp classes.
Tristan’s teaching experience began when he was on the road with his father’s band and taught at various music festivals and camps. Now that the COVID restrictions are lifting, he will continue to teach at those events. In 2020 he was scheduled to teach at ten different music camps. Many of those have been rescheduled for 2021. The information regarding Tristan’s camp and workshop schedule, as well as information about signing up to be a patron on Patreon, can be found on Tristan’s web site: tristanscroggins.com.
In addition to teaching lessons, Tristan has recently recorded a new CD at Ben Surratt’s studio and has joined Missy Raines as a member of her new band Missy Raines & Allegheny. The recording features Tristan playing solo tenor banjo, along with some hambone and foot percussion. Regarding the choice of tenor banjo, he said, “I learned to play music from my dad’s banjo playing. I would transcribe his solos to the mandolin, so my playing and phrasing is banjo-oriented.” The collection includes fiddle tunes, old-time tunes, jazz tunes, and original tunes. Tristan said, “It is like a solo mandolin album, but with a tenor banjo. I got the inspiration from Adam Hurt’s solo gourd banjo album. It was beautiful.”
Regarding his new job in Missy Raines’ band, Tristan said, “I love hanging with Missy and Ben. Missy and I were talking, and she said she was interested in getting back to more of a bluegrass sound and that she was interested in adding a mandolin player to the band. I knew that she didn’t tour as hard as my dad did, so I thought it would be fun. I admire Missy as a musician and a person, so it is nice to get to play music with her.”
If you are looking for quality mandolin instruction at a very reasonable price, please consider joining Tristan Scroggins’ Patreon. What Tristan offers with any of his subscription levels is well worth the price. Go to his website, scroll to the bottom of the home page and click the “Become a patron” button.
