Lou Martin - Bluegrass Mandolinist

      Hello, and welcome to my website. I’d like to thank my good friend Don Grieser for setting it up. Here you will find information about and sample pages from Lou Martin’s Tunebook, as well as matters pertaining to upcoming publications.
      Many will already know me as a direct mandolin disciple of Bill Monroe, as well as a mandolin disciple and protégé of Ralph Rinzler. I was born in 1944 in Syracuse, New York.

Lou Martin’s Tunebook

      Lou Martin’s Tunebook [cover], published on June 1, 2007, was written for my bluegrass mandolin students. Here is a descriptive excerpt from the introduction. The book was also written to get some of the very good but less-played traditional tunes out to the bluegrass public for appreciation and study. [list of tunes] Over the last twenty-five years or so there has been so much professional bluegrass music emphasis on writing “original tunes”, on session work (on other people’s original tunes), and on ‘career’ band-oriented recording (with very few traditional instrumentals), that there is some danger of the old ways being lost. Lou Martin’s Tunebook seeks to reestablish the previously usual common interest in the true folk music tradition that has always underlain bluegrass music: the tradition that Bill Monroe spent his whole life studying.
      As you have read in the introduction, this work also seeks to raise the bar in regard to the reading of standard notation in bluegrass, a subject that has sometimes been controversial for American and some Canadian amateur players. In the British Isles and Europe, both note reading and passing acquaintance with classical art culture and instruments is quite normal for most non-professional traditional players, and authentic traditional music has certainly not been lost (a common American fear) in that part of the world - on the contrary, it has flourished for hundreds of years to a great extent because of such practices. In those countries, one could say that the importance of notation and music publishing is reversed to American perception and precedent: in Ireland, for example, if a good player has been composing a lot and has, say, twenty-five strong tunes “back”, book publishing using only standard notation might be the first avenue taken to ‘get them out’ to the mass public. Recording, because of the large amount of money, time, and coordinative effort necessary to accomplish it - plus even more time, connections, and money for distribution - might be the last route either thought of or travelled.
       Reading standard notation fluently makes individually-initiated and individually-maintained depth study possible by giving the aspiring musician immediate access to all the century-spanning traditional tunebooks, but the acquisition of this simple skill by many American non-professional bluegrass players will hopefully have another benefit. Most full-time bluegrass performers write their own tunes, and as mentioned above, record them whenever opportunity permits. While many of these musicians are not particularly prolific due to the heavy demands of the road, just about everyone has a few good tunes that will never be put on record, and some have more than a few. With strongly increased musical literacy among the general bluegrass public, professionals will become interested in publishing their unrecorded material in book form, bypassing the convoluted, time-consuming, and often frustrating recording process. And they will hopefully write more because there will be an unencumbered, easy outlet.
       You are undoubtedly aware that there are already a great many books and other educational endeavors aimed at bluegrass players; however, extremely few use standard notation without incorporating the use of tablature/CDs to go along with it. Yet, once mastered, straight standard notation is the quickest and most direct path to both technical knowledge and intellectual comprehension of the idiom. Artistic and emotional understandings are gained in other ways.
       Tablature is actually harder to read than standard notation, does not impart music theory, and is not accessible by musicians who play other instruments. For these reasons it was abandoned by classical musicians at around the time of the death of Beethoven (1827). Tablature presented in conjunction with standard notation also adds significantly to the cost of publication, and this increased expense is passed on to the consumer.

      Lou Martin’s Tunebook is intended to strengthen your sight-reading and improve your playing technique by the depth study of solid, interesting numbers that will stand you in the best of stead. Anyone who uses this book correctly and puts in the time will become a much better traditional music mandolinist and have a greater appreciation for the foundations and origins of bluegrass music. [music samples], [other works], [order]