Sharon Gilchrist’s Creative Mandolin Backup workshop is designed for mandolinists who want to develop their rhythm and backup beyond the basic mandolin chord forms and chop or boom-chick rhythm. Mandolinists often concentrate most of their practice time on building repertoire and learning to play great solos, but when playing with other people, whatever the style of music, the amount of time mandolinists spend playing solos is much less than the amount of time they spend playing backup. 

In this workshop, Sharon will show you a few simple, easy-to-grasp concepts that will help you vary your backup playing. These concepts will allow you to improvise and respond to the instrumentalists and/or singers you’re playing with. She will talk about playing chords in different registers of the mandolin, adding sevenths to a chord when you want to move in a certain direction, creating walking lines with double stops and chords, varying your rhythm patterns, accenting the ends of verses or different parts of a tune, and more. These concepts will allow you to be more engaged the entire time you’re playing and contribute more to the overall sound of the music, which will make the entire experience of playing with other people more dynamic, alive, and fun.

You’ll learn about chord inversions and the three different inversions you can use for each chord, so you can play the same chord in lower, medium, or higher registers, and you’ll learn to play chord inversions as double stops or three-note closed chords that can be moved around the neck. You’ll apply these inversions to a variety of chord progressions, starting with a basic I–IV–V progression and then adding minor chords and seventh chords for more complex chord progressions. 

Creative Mandolin Backup is designed for intermediate-level mandolinists who are expected to know basic open forms and be at least familiar with chop chord (Monroe chord) forms, but for those who need to brush up on (or learn) these basic mandolin chord forms, we’re providing two lessons from Sharon’s Beginning Mandolin course on Peghead Nation. You can use those lessons before the course begins or refer to them as the workshop proceeds.

Sharon Gilchrist

Sharon Gilchrist began touring the national bluegrass circuit from her home state of Texas for several years before earning a BA in Mandolin Performance at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. For two decades, she has performed with many of the groundbreaking legends in bluegrass and new acoustic music including The Peter Rowan and Tony Rice Quartet, Scott Nygaard and John Reischman in The Harmonic Tone Revealers, Darol Anger, Tony Trischka, The California Bluegrass Reunion Band, Laurie Lewis and the Right Hands, Uncle Earl, and many others. She is also a respected and influential music educator offering private mandolin instruction and multiple online mandolin courses at Peghead Nation as well as teaching at music camps internationally. From 2004 to 2012, Sharon taught mandolin at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. In 2024, she joined the John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project as a featured artist and co-producer on their second album, which will be released in early 2025. Sharon lives in Nashville, Tennessee and currently performs with the John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project Trio.

Workshop Schedule:

Sessions will be held every other Wednesday on Zoom, from 5 pm to 6:30 pm PST (8 pm to 9:30 pm EST), starting on September 11, 2024.

After the workshop is complete, students will continue to have access to workshop recordings and materials when signed in to their Peghead Nation account.

Session #1: September 11

Session #2: September 25

Session #3: October 9

Session #4: October 23

Session #5: November 6

Session #6: November 20

This will be the link for all six sessions:

Topic: Creative Mandolin Backup with Sharon Gilchrist

Time: Sep 11, 2024 05:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
        Every 2 weeks on Wed, until Nov 20, 2024, 6 occurrence(s)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82617382129?pwd=XMaydsznHtbAP8nk3GOy0LqbsAbgSw.1

Meeting ID: 826 1738 2129
Passcode: 949815