I had a great time doing the mandolin workshop. The first half of the day was devoted to the basics. I covered the history of the mandolin family. I dealt with the tuning of the mandolin and stressed the importance of being in tune and having an instrument that stays in tune. This is central, in my opinion, to making good music on any instrument in any style. The simplest melody or chord structure sounds powerful if played with conviction and in tune. The musicians who inspire me are not the ones who can play more notes faster than anyone else but those who can inject their own personality and passion into their playing.

I talked about my personal approach to the mandolin and demonstrated some chording, picking techniques and alternate tunings. I showed how the mandolin can work in various genres and worked on giving everyone at the workshop something that they could master well enough to enable them to play along, no matter what their skill level.

After lunch, the workshop focused on actually getting the participants playing some music. I divided the 20-plus group into smaller circles and had the more experienced players lead while I went round to each circle in turn and helped where needed. This method worked well and we had a crack at several tunes: Boys Of Blue Hill, Ise da Bye, Memory Waltz, Beggarman, Spancill Hill, Auntie Mary, Mussels In The Corner and Paddy's. At the end of the day we played them all once through and ended with a feeling that we had accomplished our objective; those who were already playing learned more and the beginners walked out with the basics.

I previewed Gerry Strong's article on teaching his tin whistle workshop and found that we had much in common. Like him, I experienced trepidation at the sense of responsibility, never having done much "formal" teaching and I was grateful for the wonderful attitude and understanding of those who had come to learn. I enjoyed learning about teaching by doing so, and appreciated the opportunity to share my knowledge of music with others. I would like to thank Jean Hewson, Stan Pickett, Rob Brown and Andrew Lang for helping me get the message across. Thank you all - let's do it again!