Who I Am & What I Do
My name is James White, and I am the Autistic Mandolinist. I am also known across the World Wide Web as jflatnote – a handle that I have used for more than two decades.
First and foremost I am autistic, which is both preamble and subtext for everything else about me. I spent a long time at university, studying physics, music, classical Japanese, geology, hydrology, linguistics, and mathematics. Ultimately my undergrad was in geomorphology and my graduate work in natural resource law and policy.
I have been an illustrator, a network admin, a photographer, a painter, a musician, cleaner of monkey cages, repairer of 12 volt fuel pumps, piano teacher, scientist, population ecologist, city planner, data steward, Web site developer, programmer, operations manager, and now a data scientist.
I live just outside Portland, OR with my dog, Mario, and play mandolin in 43 & Change, a local bluegrass band.
Why The Autistic Mandolinist?
A life-long jazz pianist, I started to lose the ability to play the piano about 10 years ago because of rheumatoid arthritis. Starved for the connectiveness of improvised music, I began learning mandolin, which is much kinder to my hands.
Growing up, the majority of the art and music I consumed were beautiful, polished, finished products that hid all of the stress and hard work, and the many many failed attempts, abandoned takes, and do-overs that were the rest of any recording’s iceberg. And as a young artist and musician, I was often discouraged, reaching adulthood still thinking that such things were permanently outside of my grasp.
I started sharing videos on YouTube of my progress learning mandolin because of that experience, and a desire to demonstrate that consistent practice leads to step-by-step, slowly accumulating improvements.
I hope that this Web site serves a similar purpose – both in giving the practice progress videos I make some context, but also in allowing me to share more of my music and thoughts, and the resources I’ve collected over time.
Why I Post Things that I Suck At
I originally made this video to post on my TikTok account, but have since also posted it on Instagram and as the perpetual video at the top of my YouTube channel. I wanted to explain why I happily and excitedly post videos of me doing things badly.
When I started playing mandolin, I had no videos of me playing badly, because I could play at all. So my very first video in 2016 of me butchering the tune Bonnie Tammie was 1000% better than when I couldn’t play at all. And the next video of me playing Bonnie Tammie in 2022 was 10,000% better than that one. I practice almost every single day, and very slowly I’m getting better. And that’s the point.