Grateful Dead Music Forum

my friend jsut got a mandolin for his birthday, and both of us are pretty psyched. problem is, we cant find any dead tabs for mandolin. anybody on here got some?

it shouldnt be hard to play chords for songs but if anyone has tabs for melodies, riffs, etc it would be greatly appreciated

I'm a drummer that picked up mandolin a few years back. Its not gonna be easy finding mando tab. One technique I use if I cant figure it out by ear is to look at guitar tab. Simply figure out what the notes are and put that on the mando.

For Example:
E--0--2--3 the notes are E, F#, G.

Then just find those notes on the mando in the correct register.

Usually after a few notes, your ear will finish the work for you. Hope this helps.

China Cat wrote:my friend jsut got a mandolin for his birthday, and both of us are pretty psyched. problem is, we cant find any dead tabs for mandolin. anybody on here got some?

it shouldnt be hard to play chords for songs but if anyone has tabs for melodies, riffs, etc it would be greatly appreciated

Any luck finding any mandolin tab for GD songs? Thanks.

nope

What song/songs are you specifically looking for?

I don't have as much free time as I once had (3 year old son) but I might be able to work something up for you on the fly if I know what you are looking for.

I'm a newbie on the mandolin and have a friend that is pretty knowledgable in the Dead tunes. Just thought there might be something available to help me in jammin with him. Thanks for the offer. I'll post back if he gives me some tunes to learn. Have fun with the little one.

Alltabs.com has a really good and easy version of Uncle John's Band. It is tabbed out and you will need some guitar chord accompanyment for it to sound just right. Another good source for nontraditional mandolin music is folkpunktabs.com. It has a lot of punk-celtic type stuff, like the pogues and dropkick murphys. Mandolin cafe is also a great source for any information. Oh yeah, with the alltabs you can download a reader, Tef View, that will play the music with or without accompanyment, you can stop it at any time, and you can speed up or slow down. It is very nice. You can actually write your own sheet music with it, as well.

Now if anyone knows where to find either Peggy O or Shady Grove tabs or have tabbed it out I would love you forever if you would share. I know Shady Grove is not a Dead song but Jerry played it a lot with Grisman. Oh yeah, Monkey and the Engineer would be great too. Thanks a lot.

http://www.folkpunktabs.com/Mandolin.htm...

<>http://www.mandolincafe.com/tabarc.html>

For the above posting the tab requests are for Mando just to be clear. Thanks again.

fwiw, Just get out a pencil and paper and start making your own tab for the songs you are interested in.
Or, You could use the Guitar Tab Creator to create your own Mando Tab. Just delete two of the six lines, and delete or re-lable the string names for the four remaining lines.
Like the intro to Monkey and Eng... it's like 16 notes. Pick em' out and write 'em down. Tab done. Now committ to memory.
Any Dead song with a lick should be easy to pick out with a little trial and error. Cold Rain and snow for example, might be a good one, too (intro and solo licks).
fwiw, I wouldn't worry too much about single note runs untill you can strum your way through songs with fluency.
Fiddle uses the same notes, so you might do a search for fiddle tab's, too.

A few mando sites:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3198707/Chord ... d-Mandolin

http://www.all-guitar-chords.com/mandolin.php

http://4stringchords.com/

http://www.mandolincafe.com/tabarc.html

Check amazon.com for

Mel Bay presents: Shady Grove Acoustic guitar solos by Jerry Garcia MB07073
transcribed by Dix Bruce

or

Mel Bay presents: Shady Grove mandolin solos by David Grisman MB98101
transcribed by John McGann

I have both...

Another option/workarround I've used at times is to just tune the ol mando to D-G-B-E so that fingerings will match up exactly. You might need to lower the gage of the A string a notch or two to make sure it can take the extra tension from tuning up to B. You should be all set tuning the G down to D and the D down to A. I really wouldn't advise this is the mando is any type of quality one - like a Gibson or Breedlove or something - I wouldn't risk the possibility of damaging it. If its a cheapo, go for it.

Translating tabs isn't a bad excercise, and you should pick up on a bit of the theory and how the meolody works along the way.

I suggest you go over to ratdog.org. A friend of mine over there, TurnerBurner, is a mando player in a dead band in FL. Very cool person, you could pm him there and I am sure he will give you some good advice.