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A music shop near me are relocating so have 20% off everything... it would have been rude not to.

Only problem is that I don't know how to play mandolin. Any tips on where to start?

What mandolin did you get?

I've been meaning to buy one.

One of these:
https://www.musicroom.com/tanglewood-el ... 2bmandolin

So far I really like it, and have just about got the intro to Losing My Religion down. I really don't know anywhere near enough about mandolins to say if it's good or bad for the price, but I'm enjoying it!

Enjoy!

I’ve recently got an Eastman MD305. I’d had a mandolin in the past and sold it before ever getting in to it. Now I’m trying to give it a go properly…

I’ve not got far, but the most useful info I’ve gleaned so far is…(and apologies if this is all bleedin’obvious)

• The tuning in 5ths is the same as the bottom four strings of a guitar reversed - so you can visualize basic chord shapes fairly easily

• It’s tricky! It’s so easy to make a terrible noise with it, but when you start to get it right it starts to sound good - I suppose that goes for any instrument, but for me it’s not at all like, say, picking up a ukulele which doesn’t present too much of a change from guitar for me

• Following on from that, don’t try to play it like a guitar, eg, use guitar strum patterns - it definitely benefits from its own approach and technique

• The choice of pick makes a bigger difference to tone and playability than it does on guitar. I use jazz iiis mainly on guitar, and on mandolin, find much bigger and thicker plectrums are the way to go - been using these on the mandolin - https://hobgoblin.com/golden-gate-mp-1 ... KUL_D_BwE

• The string tension feels much harder than on guitar, for me. I went down a string gauge to these https://www.stringsdirect.co.uk/string ... -set-p3747 and that helps a lot, with no perceptible loss of tone or volume

Hope that’s some use - I’d love to hear the opinions of people who actually know what they are doing with the mandolin!

Bradley-Jazz wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 18, 2021 3:14 pm

Enjoy!

I’ve recently got an Eastman MD305. I’d had a mandolin in the past and sold it before ever getting in to it. Now I’m trying to give it a go properly…

I’ve not got far, but the most useful info I’ve gleaned so far is…(and apologies if this is all bleedin’obvious)

• The tuning in 5ths is the same as the bottom four strings of a guitar reversed - so you can visualize basic chord shapes fairly easily

• It’s tricky! It’s so easy to make a terrible noise with it, but when you start to get it right it starts to sound good - I suppose that goes for any instrument, but for me it’s not at all like, say, picking up a ukulele which doesn’t present too much of a change from guitar for me

• Following on from that, don’t try to play it like a guitar, eg, use guitar strum patterns - it definitely benefits from its own approach and technique

• The choice of pick makes a bigger difference to tone and playability than it does on guitar. I use jazz iiis mainly on guitar, and on mandolin, find much bigger and thicker plectrums are the way to go - been using these on the mandolin - https://hobgoblin.com/golden-gate-mp-1 ... KUL_D_BwE

• The string tension feels much harder than on guitar, for me. I went down a string gauge to these https://www.stringsdirect.co.uk/string ... -set-p3747 and that helps a lot, with no perceptible loss of tone or volume

Hope that’s some use - I’d love to hear the opinions of people who actually know what they are doing with the mandolin!

Belated reply, but thank you for this! I find the tuning quite intuitive (I used to play violin, so it's natural for me) but working out chords doesn't come quite as readily for me. The backwards guitar chords trick does speed things up though! I've not found it as easy to make awful sounds as the violin, but then again few instruments do sound worse than the violin when played badly.

A couple of weeks in and I've basically been playing REM nonstop while getting my fingers used to the tension and learning chords. I'll have an adventure to buy some mandolin specific picks soon. But so far, so good!

I would just get a chord book and dive in and use that as a basis for learning where the notes are. Your ear is already going to be trained to some degree playing guitar and whatever other instruments you play.

As a former violin player I've often considered getting one, but there isn't a big calling for one in the music I like to play. If I were a side/session player I would absolutely do it though.

Congrats! If you’ve ever played violin, you’ve already got a huge head start. With those tiny close-together frets I always have to remind myself to do one finger per scale note, like a violin, not one finger per fret, like a guitar.

Unfortunately (for me, anyway) once you get used to the “four courses tuned in fifths” thing, it can be a bit of a gateway drug into impulse lusting after a bunch of those other Eastwood Warren Ellis toys, bouzoukis, mandolas, mandocellos… ‍♂️

chrisrnps wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:06 pm

Congrats! If you’ve ever played violin, you’ve already got a huge head start. With those tiny close-together frets I always have to remind myself to do one finger per scale note, like a violin, not one finger per fret, like a guitar.

Unfortunately (for me, anyway) once you get used to the “four courses tuned in fifths” thing, it can be a bit of a gateway drug into impulse lusting after a bunch of those other Eastwood Warren Ellis toys, bouzoukis, mandolas, mandocellos… ‍♂️

I have a Weber Y2K mandolin. I got it in 2001...it's a great instrument. When my son was little (4 or 5) he was taking violin lessons, I would take the mandolin and take the lesson with him. I learned a lot.

I still break it out now and again.

Youtube. there's gotta be someone on their with some starter lessons.

I've been playing my Mando more lately. Really fun. I get a weird high out of it, like I'm doing something timeless and sacred. It's just the old world feel of the thing I guess. Plus they're so tiny. Idk, that makes them feel more like a leisure than guitar.

I've had one for years, but only last year did I realize that its action was horrendous high. I had to modify the bridge and knock down a couple high frets, but it was a total eureka moment.

Lately, I've just been finding a few pentatonic and diatonic scales and just dancing around them in a folksy picking pattern. Feels like I found a cheat code and I can play "fake" good. I think it's easier to "fly" on a Mando. The 5th tuning means you can do a whole scale in 2 strings, 3 fingers, and the same pattern.

I like that yours has a neck pickup. You can slam it with fuzz or crazy reverb. Idk if sonic youth ever did this, but the possibilities for experimentation seem limitless.

Now of course, as is all of our wont, I'm getting curious about other ones and kind of want to get more.

I played mandolin in a pretty good bluegrass band back in the late 70's/early 80's.

Here are a couple tracks that featured me on the mandolin. BTW, I made this F-5 mandolin from scratch back then.

https://soundcloud.com/user-229145219/h ... al_sharing

https://soundcloud.com/user-229145219/h ... al_sharing