Any mandolin players?

I just bought one, as a birthday present to myself. Now I am trying to get it figured out.

Just wondering if anyone here played.

Mandolin players they gots little instruments...thats why in Bluegrass they love sing that high Cee!!!!

from which mandolins descend. Here is a website with mandolin info:

http://www.mandolincafe.com/archives/faq.html

There's websites out there with chord charts, to get ya started.

I mostly just mess around with it. I'm proficient at nothing, but own (and can passably play) the mandolin, banjo, guitar, and ukulele.

...But I squeeze a mean accordian. :)

(Edited to add): If you like R.E.M., play the "Out Of Time" album and play along with the mandolin parts. Buck was just a beginner then, and it's satisfying that after a short time you can play as well as he did.

The lowest string on the mandolin is exactly the same as the G on guitar. The next string is the D that's equal to the seventh fret on the G, then an A (again seven frets up), and finally the E, which is an octave above the guitar's high E.

Now consider guitar chords. A moment's reflection should convince you that the guitar's bottom four strings, E-A-D-G, are equivalent to the mandolin strings (G-D-A-E), only upside down. Therefore, any chord you can form on the bottom four strings on a guitar, you can turn upside down and play on the mandolin. (However, these are generally not the chord shapes the bluegrassers play. I've never really learned those, or indeed any of the standards of bluegrass. I mostly play Celtic music.)

Anyway, that should get you started. (At least, that's how I got there.)

I was looking at chord charts to try and find basic chord shapes (like A, E and C for guitar) and then it hit me:

The mandolin is tuned in fifths, instead of fourths. So any chord I wanted to play would be the top four strings of chords on the guitar, flipped upside down.

Thanks for the tip!

It was a natural progression since I've played the fiddle for about 20 years. All the fiddle tunes in my brain translated easily to the mandolin, some even came back that I had forgotten about. The only difficulty was getting my picking synced up with my left hand. You can do runs of notes on a violin with one stroke of the bow. Not so on the mando.

The best advice I've heard is to try to play along with everything you hear, like TV commercials. It's hard to learn by copying recorded bluegrass because they usually play too fast.

That, and of course SCALES SCALES SCALES! You have to know some basic scales to be able to play well. I believe there are some on Mandolin Cafe.

On Edit: I'm out of the 700 club!!! Praise Jeebus! :)

working out scales on my own. I know tons of theory, and play the piano and guitar.
Thank you for the advice.

And you are very right about it being a bad idea to try playing along with bluegrass musicians. They are a bit too quick for me.

Listen to him.

Vivaldi composed for the Mandolin, Mozart owned one.

You can always play the blues




http://www.recordsbymail.com/static/artistSearch.php/artistFirst/YANK/artistLast/RACHEL

I been wanting to get a new one. Thinking about building one from stewmac for the fun of it.

at Homespun Tapes (books, audio, video, DVD, etc.). They have a web site, I don't know the URL but you can google it.

Listen, listen, listen to lots of mando music. And practice, practice, practice. The thing I really like about mando and fiddle is that the notes seems to be where you intuitively think they would be (does that make sense?); much more so, I think, than guitar. Probably results from the tuning in fifths.

Most of all: HAVE FUN WITH IT!!

Bake

Mostly melodies by double picking (fast picking on down and up strokes). Mostly I play to improve my right hand techniques on the guitar. I bought it for my wife several years ago, but mostly I play it myself. :-)

My wife got me one for Valentine's Day, as I had always been saying I'd love to learn. I've got some basic chords down, and I've done a bit of picking, but overall, not too much. I'll have to think about that "upside down thing". :)

I could ask him.

but the mandolin is tuned the same as the fiddle, so all the fingering is the same. However, mandolins have much thinner and sharper strings. Be prepared to develop some serious caluses if you really want to play the darned thing. In the process you will have to go through a fair amount of pain to get there.

I have fooled around with a mandolin on rare occasions but I have to stick the thing under my chin to get anywhere.

Try David Grisman if you want to hear someone who can kick ass on the mandolin. Grisman and Jerry Garcia put out a few albums together. Their album "Not For Children Only" is a good one for learning to play some straight forward versions of a good sampling of old familiar tunes.

who plays one in a band. They are going down to Winfield next week. Let me know if you are interested, maybe he could give you a start.

... but a huge bluegrass fan.

I get to see Tim O'Brien in concert in Eugene in early October: http://www.ofam.net/events/nht2003/nht2003.asp?section=events&event=309&series=NHT200304

Yee ha!