Hey Jim,
Please take my suggestions as only that… suggestions. What I suggest may very well not work for you, and for that matter, I might just be giving bad advice. With that said, these are things that I see in your playing:
That’s a great song and I like your tone and playing. You have a really great foundation. I didn’t look at your left hand much, but when I did I immediately noticed we both have thumb joints that allow our thumb to bend backwards. Maybe we share some common ancestors We also share a common bad habit (at least what I consider to be a bad habit). When practicing a song that is memorized, if I mess up, I tend to want to quickly pause and redo the section I messed up. The reason I think it is a bad habit is that it ingrains a behavior that you can’t do while playing in a group. It is taking me a long time to undo that habit and I may never be free of it. I figured I’d mention it in case it wasn’t something you were aware you were doing. Playing with a metronome or a backing track helps me eliminate that tendency because just like playing with others, the tune is going to go on and we don’t have the luxury of redoing bits. Everybody makes mistakes. It seems that the high level players don’t even “miss a beat” when they do… they just keep plugging away. If you don’t own one there are free online metronomes which work just fine. I don’t always play with a metronome or backing track, but it is helpful to do at times.
I was primarily looking at your right hand. You use your finger and thumb motion great. It looks alot like Tony Rice’s movement (although not quite as exaggerated). Overall, your right hand looks tight. I know that’s not particularly helpful in and of itself. A couple things to try to loosen it.
- Loosen your pick grip as much as you can. Altering how you hold the pick so that there is more skin in contact allows one to grip looser, but still hold on.
- I notice for me that when I play rhythm, my right hand is looser. I am trying to make my picking out of melody right hand technique more like my rhythm technique. At times I can get the feel of it and it seems to help. Perhaps try looking at what you are doing when playing rhythm as visual guide to looseness.
- It looks like your arm is about flat against the mandolin top and then your wrist bends backwards to get the picking hand over the strings. To a certain extent, I do the same (bending the wrist backwards) and it’s probably hurting both of us as it leads to tension. To demonstrate this, hold your hand in front of you like you like you are going to shake hands. Rotate your wrist up and down a little (no problem). Now bend your wrist back and do the same rotation… I can feel the tension all the way through my elbow. To correct this, try raising your wrist up so that the back of your wrist is about flat.
Any time there are mechanical changes, it takes some time to get used to them. Slow down just a tad for a while until you can easily play whatever it is you are playing. In fact, if at all possible, eliminate speed as a concern. Just try to focus on eliminating tension and then worry about tone and evenness. Whenever I have speed as a goal I tend to revert to whatever form I have learned over the years (and it’s self defeating). Work on playing with a looser hand and playing a song as smooth and fluid as you can, and the speed will just happen. I don’t expect it to happen overnight, as it never has for me. With that said, I hope it does happen quickly for you.
Again, take all I said with a grain of salt. I suspect you will get some great advice from others who post here.
Best of luck to you!