Mandolin lessons in Thames Ditton
Eight strings in four pairs, tuned like a violin, played like a guitar. The mandolin is quick to get a tune out of and endlessly deep once you are in — and hardly anybody around here teaches it.
Who these lessons are for
- Beginners drawn in by folk, bluegrass, Irish or Italian playing.
- Guitarists and violinists adding a second instrument — the crossover is generous in both directions.
- Players who can strum chords but want to play the tune itself.
- Anyone who has inherited one and would like to know what to do with it.
What a lesson looks like
Same lengths and rates as everything else. We start from a tune you want — a jig, a bluegrass break, a song you have heard and cannot get out of your head — and build the right hand around it, because on the mandolin the plectrum is most of the battle. Tremolo, cross-picking and the double-stop shapes come in as the tunes ask for them.
Levels and exams
Beginner to comfortably advanced. There is no widely used graded exam ladder for mandolin in the way there is for piano, which I think suits the instrument — progress here is measured in tunes you can play with other people.
In Tom’s words
The mandolin is where three of my interests turn out to be one. Its tuning is a violin's, its right hand is a plectrum player's, and the tremolo that gives it its voice is doing exactly what ornament does in Indian classical music: sustaining and shaping a note that would otherwise die immediately. An instrument with almost no sustain has to make its singing tone out of movement. Once you hear it that way it stops being a technique to acquire and becomes the point of the instrument.
What it costs
Prices are being confirmed — please ask and Tom will tell you straight away.
A free tool that helps
Tuner — mandolin among the presets, with the paired courses drawn properly. Free, no signup, works on a phone.
To print: Mandolin tab paper — blank four-line tab, one line per course, names down the left; and Blank mandolin fretboard diagrams — twelve-fret necks for chord shapes and scales (PDFs, A4). All the blank paper.
Worth reading next
Ready to start?
Tell Tom what you would like to play and roughly where you are, and he will come back to you with times.
Get in touch