I’m still playing the fiddle and, according to my teacher, and by my own estimation, getting better all the time. Also still playing backup for the LOCO pickup dance band on Wednesdays. Which has helped. Nothing like ensemble work and performance to push things along.
But my teacher says I need to learn chord progressions concretely for a full transition to understanding chords for improvisation—which he contends fiddlers of the future who hope to make a career of music need to know. I’m a little old for a career of any kind but it would be fun to move up to a solo performance now and then.
The mandolin—which he also plays—could be the key, since, unlike the guitar, its notes (and therefore its chords) are fingered the same way they are on the violin. Playing them vertically instead of horizontally could be easier, or something like that.
I’m looking at this mandolin and this method book, thought I may only get the latter. One of the good melody fiddlers in the band, Stewart Rose, has a mandolin for sale which he will bring to the performance tonight for me to take home and try out before I buy.
UPDATE: Stewart loaned me his A-model Kentucky KM 200S, similar to this one but a dark brown top. Despite the name, Kentuckys are made in China, though I think the 200S is old enough to have been made in Japan. Sounds good and has no cracks or other visible defects. And the $200 price is right.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
I wuzgonna send you a couple of links to some of what I consider “good” violin and mandolin – the violins are from the group It’s a Beautiful Day, a late sixties band with whom I have a history, and of course, Zappa, on “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” specifically that cover of Directly From My Heart.
The mandolin I favor most has to be the David Grisman albums, any of them, but more especially any of the Garcia and Grisman albums.
I’ll give you some links, if you like, but I don’t want to seem presumptuous. I know there are many, many, violin pieces (classical and/or bluegrass and/or country) that would shame the ones I mentioned, and have no doubt that many, many bluegrass mandolinists are equal or better than Grisman. But these are the styles of those instruments I tend to favor…i.e., rock influenced.
That would be great, JD, thanks. I’d put them to good use.
UPDATE: I bought an MP3 of IABD’s White Bird which I remember from those days of 1969-onward. The fiddle solo is nice work, including the precise pizzacato at the beginning. Wish I had that guy’s tone.