July 2026 Content
Content
Hey all, Jordan here on behalf of the team to bring you an update for the new tunes and lessons being added for July. I hope you all enjoy it and I hope it helps. I'm a little more behind than usual. I've been quite busy teaching private lessons and band classes at my local music academy, and have been playing and traveling a lot with my current band, "The Lowland Ramblers". I'm actually typing this from a hotel room in North Carolina, and edited a lot of the video for this month's update on the car ride up, in a coffee shop, and finally here in the hotel. I'm actually stepping away from the band starting next month. This is so I will be able to focus more on my work with Tunefox and teaching locally. I still hope to fill in with the band occasionally and if they are ever playing in an area near you come out to a show and hang. I love all the members of this band dearly. It's a great group of kind and caring people that really love bluegrass music and jamming.
There's a heap of new tunes, tabs and a few video lessons to check out this month. Check out the overview video to get a rundown of all the new tunes. If you want some extra musicianship and practice tips to help you boost your speed and control, then give that video a watch as well.
Grand Overview
Practice Tips for Banjo, Mandolin & Guitar
1. Separate Picking and Fret Hand Challenges
Piano players do this all the time. We should do it as well. The concept can apply to guitar, mandolin, and banjo. Check out the video for a few examples of how to practice the fretting & pick hand challenges separately.
2. Practice Pull-Offs Without Picking
This tip could easily be under the umbrella of practicing fret hand challenges separately, but I went into a bit more detail in the video, and talked about a recent lesson with a private student in which this concept came up and thought it deserved it's own section.
3. Use Foundational Exercises to Help Boost Speed
In the video, I give a personal example of how I use this concept. I've been working on Ode to a Butterfly on Banjo. For my arrangement, I'm playing the song using the single string style. To increase my speed and dexterity, I'm not only practicing the song, but also play single string exercises as a warmup. This concept can also be applied to any song or instrument. You just need to think critically about the challenges that a song presents. What are the foundational scales, chord and picking hand patterns that are being used? It can be as simple as realizing that the mandolin tune you are working on is in the key of A, so you use the A major scale as a warmup before playing the tune!