Mandoisland

Welcome to Mandoisland! Willkommen auf MandoIsland! 

 

My name is  Michael Reichenbach. I have played the mandolin for many years, and I think, that the mandolin is a very interesting instrument!

 I have collected a lot of interesting information about the mandolin, bluegrass, mandolin methods, music for mandolin and much more. I want to share everything that I know about the mandolin, its history, how you can learn to play the mandolin and which pieces are interesting to play.

Please bookmark this page and come back to check for new topics!
You can also send me your wishes and ideas!

An overview of the pages already available in English: Pages in English

On the German version of this homepage you can find additional pages - I have only translated the most interesting pages to English.

 

While this website is more static and contains the information that does not change often I do regularly post articles about mandolin players, mandolin orchestras, great youtube videos, new sources for sheet music, plucked instruments of other parts of the Worls an more in my blog:

www.mandoisland.com

I have also started a new website in German which is better for smartphones and tablets. I will insert links to the most important pages on this website too, especially links to my new posts about mandolin methods.

mandoweb.de

Mandolin - Instrument of the Year 2023

The mandolin is the Instrument of the year in Germany. I have started a new website to present information about the mandolin. A special project is to present a "mandolin player of the day" for every day in the year. Although this is in German it might also be interesting for English-speaking persons.

mandoline2023.de


2011_09_03_0670_michael_reichenbach_400.jpg

(photo by Armin Schweizer)

You can find more about me on page  About me

Have fun!

I have been composing pieces for the mandolin for more than 20 years. As the classical guitar was my first instrument, I try to compose "complete" pieces - pieces, that sound full by using chords, double stops, and special picking techniques. Most pieces are influenced by my love for bluegrass, blues and folk - but also by my knowledge of the mandolin music of the "romantic mandolin music" of the late 19th and early 20th century. 

I have published several books with my compositions - you can find information, recordings and examples about those books in  my_compositions. You can also listen to recordings of some other pieces on page recordings.

 
On page mandolin_players I present some of my favorite mandolin players and other important mandolin players. More great mandolin players can be found in my blog www.mandoisland.com
 
I have a big collection of old and new mandolin methods, a list of those methods and a presentations of many interesting methods with information, pictures and complete download of many methods can be found on page  mandolin_methods - this project will be continued and I hope to be able to present all important mandolin methods by time.
 

On page free sheet music you can download several complete mandolin methods, exercises for the mandolin and other free sheet music. Many selected and usefull links for free sheet music resources for mandolin, guitar, folk and more can be found on page free sheetmusic links

On page interesting_links you can find links to pages with more information about the mandolin, bluegrass and music.

 

On page Plucked Strings Topics I have collected pages about  topics like the mandolin festivals,  the mandolin symposium in Trossingen, the mandolin in Japan or Brazil, etc. 

 

I am very interested in the history of the mandolin and mandolin orchestras, I have compiled newspaper articles about Dave Apollon and interesting articles about mandolin history from the Music Trade Review.

 

There are also special pages about tipps and tricks,  electric mandolins , choro and brazilian music, free sheet music, jazz and  music for plucked instruments in the internet

I have compiled information, videos and recordings of many of the choros from the songbook choro - a great resource to get into the Brazilian choro music where the bandolim - the Brazilian mandolin plays a very important role.

If you want to contact me, please use the "send me a message" page - I will answer all messages as fast as possible.

 
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