After 6-1/2 years of writing for Mel Bay's free online webzine, "Mandolin Sessions," we breached the borders of self-plagiarism. You write enough about a singular subject, you run the danger of repeating yourself. Site Author, Ted Eschliman was four days from turning in a recent article, only to find the article he'd written had already been written. Five years earlier; by him.

We're looking at novel approaches to the Jazz Mandology library, and the new one for April is an intriguing one, "Chord Combinations for the Lizard Ear." Biologists will tell you about the notion of the "Lizard Brain" (interesting topic--try Googling it...) There's nothing creative in this part of the brain, only a motor reaction to the environment, basic survival, sans calculation or creativity.

Sometimes, it's fun to just sit with the instrument and start fingering chords that sound good, just for the sake of uncovering sounds. No thinking, no analysis, no theory, just aural discovery. Just the lizard ear basking in the warm sunshine of glorious extended chords and sounds.

We've taken some of the staff chord favorites and put them in this upcoming article. If it goes over well, we may open up for the readership to contribute some faves.

Until then, checkout the 37 articles archived in our "Mandolin Sessions" page:
Jazz Mandology

Posted by Ted at February 25, 2010 4:26 PM