Every time I go to my mandolin lesson. I learn something new. Not just something new about bluegrass music, although I do find myself learning about this as well. What I really learn at Mandolin Lesson is how to listen to music more deeply, and this is what, more than anything else, improves my music playing, and increases my enjoyment thereof. It is hard to describe these Mandolin Lessons, because there is a lot of subtlety. My mandolin teacher is actually a good friend of mine. We grew up together, but while he was taking a mandolin lesson from the local band teacher, I was usually outside playing basketball.

Because we are so close together, he doesn't always have to instruct with a lot of words. What often happens is that I will play last weeks lesson. He will smile at me, and then play the part that he thinks I need to work on to me. I will listen, and play that part back to him. “No, listen,” my friend and teacher will say, and will play that part again, this time slowly. This is where the real Mandolin Lesson begins. Soon, I will hear something that I had never heard before, and where I previously thought that I was playing things just like he had shown me, I will suddenly be able to spot some small mistake in my own phrasing or intonation.

Sometimes the things that go on in the Mandolin Lesson are much more obvious. For example, sometimes my teacher will show me a new technique, and I will have to practice it, or he will show me some new fingering. Occasionally I have so completely misunderstood something that he will have to explain at length the proper way to do it. And then, sometimes the mandolin lesson is about music theory.

But my favorite Mandolin Lessons are the ones that involve very little conversation at all. If the mandolin lesson is like that, in the alternating sound of bluegrass mandolin and silence, I will be able to hear nuances in the music that I never could hear before. Just listening for the little detail that he is trying to show me sometimes takes up all of my concentration, and playing the mandolin lesson becomes itself quite a challenge, but it is almost always a challenge I am up for. It is something that helps me learn the instrument that I love.