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The right hand is everything in mandolin. Whether you’re playing solo or with an ensemble, you need to control what your right hand is doing.

In his lesson on Open Chords here at ArtistWorks, Mike Marshall demonstrates a flowing, strumming relaxed pattern. The pattern is down, down up, down down up. The annotation of the bluegrass standard Mike uses to teach “Nine Pound Hammer” is excerpted below. It shows how the pattern is used in the context of a song.