Mandolin Teacher

04/26/2026

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04/09/2026

Spring always feels like a fresh start. The light comes back, the air softens, and after a long winter it feels good to pick up the mandolin again with a little more energy. But for a lot of us, especially as we get older, spring can also bring something less welcome. Tight hands, forearm fatigue, and those sudden cramps that seem to come out of nowhere.

https://mandoworks413.blogspot.com/2026/04/spring-season-brings-cramping.html

03/19/2026

Behind The Bush in the Garden: A Traveling Jig with Deep Roots

“Behind The Bush in the Garden” is one of those tunes that feels instantly familiar the first time you hear it—lively, rhythmic, and perfectly suited for dancing. Most often played as a single jig in A Dorian (or A minor, depending on interpretation), it has long been part of the shared musical language between Scottish and Irish traditional music. What makes this tune especially interesting is its dual identity....

“Behind The Bush in the Garden” is one of those tunes that feels instantly familiar the first time you hear it—lively, rhythmic, and perfectly suited for dancing. Most often played as a single jig …

03/19/2026

“Behind The Bush in the Garden” is a lively single jig in A Dorian/A minor that has circulated for a long time in both Scottish and Irish traditions, turning up in manuscripts, printed collections, and field recordings. It is associated with fiddle and pipe repertory and is often played for dancing or in session sets, for example on recordings by céilí bands and traditional fiddlers such as Mickey Doherty. The melody is closely related to older Scottish material (one strand of the tradition links it to the song “Wha’ll Be King but Charlie?”), and modern tune encyclopedias explicitly classify its core source region as Scotland with subsequent adoption into Irish playing, so it is more accurate to say it is a shared Scottish–Irish tune rather than purely Irish in origin.