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Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
I was playing my Collings MT and just loved the sound of it. Not my playing, but the sound of this mandolin. I am using D'Addario EXPs that I still have and every note sounds so nice. The flat keys sound very "warm" and the sharp keys bright but still rich sounding.
Now if I could only play better!
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Absolutely! All four of them!
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
This happens to me all the time while playing my MT. The D-course is particularly magical on mine.
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Pre Covid I would routinely go to Dusty Strings, a Seattle music store that has a nice stock of nicer mandolins. Sure I would lust over different, newer, nicer instruments... but really, most often I would leave wanting to go home to play mine.
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
We redid the wood floors in our living room and dining room, this summer. While the rooms were empty, I played my mandolin into them from the doorway and the sound was so mesmerizing I was stuck there for hours.
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
The sound of my mandolin cures MAS every time. When I feel the urge, I play my mandolin and think how can it sound better than this.
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Sometimes I'm holding my mandolin just right, and the whole thing just wakes up and sings. The whole instrument is vibrating and I can feel it as well as hear it.
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Indeed anytime is good but ... Especially when I have put on a fresh set of strings. The crisp ringing the solid pop of a four tone chord. It encourages me to play more and more often. R/
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
There is a spot in my music room that really boosts the timbre of my mandolins. There are days when I forget what I was planning to practice and just listen to the tone of simple scales or complex chord cadences. Happens with all of my mandolins (I need to rotate them so that they don't get jealous).
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Absolutely.
Especially if the tune/song has a B minor in it. Ear candy.
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mitch Stein
We redid the wood floors in our living room and dining room, this summer. While the rooms were empty, I played my mandolin into them from the doorway and the sound was so mesmerizing I was stuck there for hours.
My favorite spot to play in my house is just behind the front door in entry hall. There is tile behind the door and then a wood floor. The natural reverb is awesome, though I think it freaks out the mailman sometimes when he comes to the door to drop my mail.
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! :mandosmiley:
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Quote:
My favorite spot to play in my house is just behind the front door in entry hall. There is tile behind the door and then a wood floor. The natural reverb is awesome,
Sometimes I play in the bathroom for that reason - a light touch and the mandolin rings for days.
The family thinks I'm weird but that's nothing new.
Kirk
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Well, there was that one time ... :whistling:
A few years ago, my band had just finished playing an interesting show. We were sort of the background music for a cabaret setting, with ladies and gents dressed pretty snazzily and dancing swing-style to our music, which was varied but we kept it in that era for this event. This was during our band's peak time, which lasted well over a year, during which we were pretty much the toast of the town. All in all, after a long time, life was pretty good for me at the time.
Since things were going so well, I thought it might be a good time to chance it, and succumb to the lead singer's incessant entreaties for me to join them in the indulgence of some smokables. (I hope it's OK to include this mention, as it is a crucial plot element.) I had always demurred, as the stuff doesn't agree with me anymore, although back in the day I couldn't get enough. But about a dozen or so years ago, the stuff started getting me too wigged out, so I stopped doing it. But here we were, I was in a good space and vibe, feeling pretty good about life. So I had a puff or two on our break. The gig went well, even with me getting a bit experimental musically here and there. Some of my band mates had some giggles when I got a bit loose on a lead, but I survived all right.
After the show, we broke down and packed up. Before loading out, we sat down and hung out with the promoter and a few other people, chatting, having a beer or two. I was listening to the acoustics of the room - second floor of an old building, nice aged wood, with a peaked ceiling about 5-6 meters high at the peak. I thought I'd play my mandolin a bit, just to hear how it sounded in that acoustic space. Well, I'll tell you what. That little thing produced a sound that just filled the air, sounding bright but not shrill, bold but not harsh, light but not flimsy - in a word, perfect. I got to playing a melody I'd written, a sort of Calypso with a lively mixture of melody and rhythm. It's sort of self-contained, self-sustaining that way. It sounded so good, I couldn't stop playing. I dropped out of the conversation for the most part, happy to produce this background music, letting that be my contribution to the proceedings.
After a few times around, the lead singer piped up with some mockery - look at you, you're so stoned, that sort of stuff. I thought that was pretty asinine of him, not just letting me be and enjoy myself, especially since he'd been instrumental in producing my state of mind. But he did suffer from professional jealousy, wishing he could play as well as I, even if he couldn't be honest enough to admit it. So I ignored him, because I was enjoying the way my mandolin sounded so much, and also the piece has a way of turning the end into a beginning and starting over. I must have played for ten minutes or more, and didn't stop until my band mates decided it was time to go. I didn't indulge in that stuff again, not for maybe a year, and that was the last time.
I've no idea if it really sounded that good, or my buzz was directing my perceptions. I prefer to believe the former. One of these days, when I'm ready to do some serious recording, I want to go back to that room and check it out, see if I can lay down my lead tracks there. :mandosmiley:
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
The Gavin Baird F4 in my avatar makes me feel like that every time. Such a joy these little things are!
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
That's how you know you got the right one(s)...
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Yes, and I went through about 10 of them before I found one I loved. No more MAS! How many did you go through?
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Pretty much every time I play it. :mandosmiley:
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
FrDNicholas
I was playing my Collings MT and just loved the sound of it. Not my playing, but the sound of this mandolin. I am using D'Addario EXPs that I still have and every note sounds so nice. The flat keys sound very "warm" and the sharp keys bright but still rich sounding.
Now if I could only play better!
It's a wonderful thing that you still love the sound of your Collings MT. It's great to "bond" with your instrument, that's for sure. Especially in these difficult times. I don't mean this in a provocative way, but I wonder how flat keys can sound warm to you, and sharp keys can sound bright, on an equal-tempered instrument, like a fretted mandolin. In other words, I fully understand how each of the keys can sound a bit different in just temperament, like on a violin, but that isn't supposed to happen in equal temperament, which is based on having exactly the same frequency relationships for scale notes in all the possible keys (using twelfth-root-of-2 frequency ratios)! I suppose you could be playing a few of the "sharp" keys (D, A, G, E, etc.) using more open-string notes than you do on the "flat" keys (F, Bb, Eb, Ab, etc.). Open strings have a subtly different sound from fretted ones. But other than that, I am baffled by your report.
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
I love the sound of my mandolins every time I play them. That's why i have them! They all sound wonderful in different ways, that's why I have more than one. Now if I could only play up to the ability of my mandolins....
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Re: Ever just love the sound of your mandolin?
Every time I play my Silverangel I feel that way. Almost 95% of the time with the other 2 as well.