Mandolin more difficult than guitar - cosmic truth!

[JeffD]

I rub a little Lava soap on my fiddle pegs and it keeps them from drifting or slipping. Makes them pretty easy to tune. I keep a chunk of the soap in my case.

[Jeff Mando]

I haven't read all 6 pages, but the way the title reads implies that most of us started on guitar and picked up mandolin later in life, which I think is probably true for 99.99 percent of us. The exceptions being Ricky Skaggs, Thile, Ronnie Reno, etc. Mostly people who grew up in a family band. I guess Ronnie McCoury started on violin then switched to mandolin.

If you think of the amount of time and practice you originally put into learning the guitar, let's say one hour a day for 10 years....with most of us, it was probably more like 3 or 4 hours a day, because I was young and had the time to devote to it. When I was in my early 30's, I moved to a different city and didn't know a lot of people, so I played guitar sometimes 8-10 hours a day, even though I had been playing professionally for years at that point, well guess what? My playing improved a whole lot that year!

My point is if we try to learn a new instrument later in life, we probably don't have hours a day to devote to practice, because most of us are busy trying to make a living. Some of us would be lucky to spend a hour a day on mandolin. Also, even if we do have the time, we are probably fighting old guitar habits that have nothing to do with learning mandolin. There is also something disappointing to be fairly accomplished on one instrument, then switching to another and sucking at it.....we'll call it a learning curve.

I don't think the mandolin is necessarily any more difficult than guitar if you have the time and interest to practice a lot. I would say, compared to guitar, something like the electric bass would probably be easier than mandolin, because the notes would be the same--provided it played easily and was well set-up. But that would be lower, and y'all want to go higher!

[JeffD]

Good point, where you are in life when you first pick up the instrument make a difference. Perhaps in either direction.

In one case it makes the second instrument, either guitar or mandolin, harder, because you have less time to practice (and perhaps less patience to deal with it). On the other hand it might make it seem easier because you finally have the maturity and desire to really dig in and learn it right from the start.


I think for beginners the guitar has much more context in life and culture. There are very many more ways a person (a young person especially) can imagine themselves with a guitar.

It was this guitar culture that pushed me (a naïve but stubborn contrarian) into the mandolin. I am now learning the guitar, and not doing well with it.

[catmandu2]

... I am now learning the guitar, and not doing well with it.

Because of the guitar’s tremendous capacity, I heartily recommend a pedagogic approach - a consistent formal orientation, method and tutelage. Lots of ways to undermine one’s study of the instrument, become frustrated, and/or mired in terminal idiomatic patterns (folk-style strumming, for example)...not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with this - indeed it provides lots of satisfaction for lots of folks - but is also the point of much criticisms, as we often discuss.

Because of the instrument’s capacity - there are several approaches in basic pedagogy (compared with mandolin, with which we can more readily boil down basic pedagogy to flatpicking essentials and a more simplified [as has been discussed] approach to beginning harmonic applications - frankly, this is a big reason why mandolin and its pedagogic resources makes a better first study instrument...more effective guitar methods will begin with such an approach - fundamental harmony and theory, etc.)

A basic pedagogic approach for guitar encompasses quite a bit more (it's a bigger instrument with greater dimension), but first you must decide what style you want to play - particularly as an adult learner.

Do you want to use your fingers or a plectrum? Of course, we can do both (even simultaneously - see Page BMS upstream); however, here is where we can quickly get into trouble - and where terminal dilettantism may take root.

How many of us - as adult learners or after some limited guitar experience long ago - have picked-up this or that chord, or song, from others? I think - due to the guitar’s wonderful utility as a simple “folk” instrument (i.e., strumming song accompaniment), this pervasive popular conception impedes pedagogic opportunity: instead of proper pedagogy, folks dabble and play at it - in pedagogy and in perpetuity - learning the instrument only in this limited application. Many methods/books utilize a “folk”-style approach, too - which also tends to introduce this approach that we often criticize: viz., introducing open position strumming chords (“cowboy” chords) - which sound great, but not the best pedagogy for exploiting the guitar's potential.

Once this is decided, we can move on. Two basic approaches - necessitating two different methods…these can further subdivide into more discrete concepts, exercises and resources as idiomatic approaches indicate. But if you start down the road of idiomatic application - it can easily frustrate, or otherwise impede opportunity. Unfortunately, this is probably the course that the vast majority of "guitar players" or aspirers take.

[Bertram Henze]

It was this guitar culture that pushed me (a naïve but stubborn contrarian) into the mandolin.

I can relate, though it went different for me. With the violin as the instrument being taught but not being loved, I always longed for a guitar but did not do well with that either for the reasons given. Had been looking for an instrument with reasonable tuning but without the violin's awkward playing position and ClassiGeek image, in other words a guitar done right - and I found the mandolin

[ralph johansson]

I would agree that nobody is forced into rote memorization of chord forms, and that the decision to just memorize a pile of arcane finger positions with alphabetical names is a decision made out of attitude, approach to music, and goals.

But don't you think the symmetry of the mandolin makes the learning and understanding hill less steep. What ever you learn here applies up there too, and that the even interval across the strings is a fifth, so important to western music.

I dunno.

I can safely say that whatever difficulties I experienced in learning the guitar they had nothing to do with the tuning. I simply worked systematically, learning the fretboard in several stages. The first was to learn all the major scales in 1st position, one key at a time, starting with C, and then working my way along the circle of fifths in both directions. The next stage was to move up the neck; e.g., the key of Eb sits naturally in 3rd position, because you can get all the scale notes using four fingers on four frets, without stretching. The next stage was to free myself from fixed positions, using boxes, chord forms, double stops, working along the strings rather than across them, etc. Going up the neck covering more than four frets with four fingers no longer presented a problem. I believe it was a year before I even attempted chords.

[ralph johansson]

That is, of course, at the heart of everything considered "easy". The violin is where I learned music, so guess how easy the mandolin is to me, harmony-wise. But if I had to build from scratch, knowing only the circle of fifths, I know I'd like an instrument that represents that circle, at least in part.

But didn't you find it hard to understand harmony on the violin? I feel that my harmonic limitations come from the limitations of the guitar compared to the piano - it's easier to hear chords that you can play.

[Bertram Henze]

But didn't you find it hard to understand harmony on the violin? I feel that my harmonic limitations come from the limitations of the guitar compared to the piano - it's easier to hear chords that you can play.

Playing chords on the violin is such a rare and frustrating thing, that I never even thought about it.
On mandolin, I tend to say:

A chord is a base, a third and a fifth. Not all of them have to be there at a time for accompaniment purposes, so you can do much leaving the third away, and with fifth tuning you're swimming in open fifth doublestops, taking care of two of the courses - that's all the understanding I need. Now all I have to do for a 4-course strum is to figure out what to do with the other two courses, and that is rarely a problem - they can either provide a third, copy a base or fifth or else add something "extra" to make the chord sound exotic and complicated (B7sus4 is a two-finger dream, in fact the more complicated the chord notation looks the less fingers you need). To be honest, I just experiment until the accompaniment sounds good at minimum expense of fingers and figure out what that chord might be called later, if at all.

About "hearing chords that I can play" - since I play ITM, accompaniment is a matter of gathering experience that every player must go through, independent of instrument in order to not be nuisance to melody players. But the patterns I play for a tune in G can simply be shifted one or two courses up for tunes in D or A. The built-in circle of fifths again.

[Loretta Callahan]

Ditto!

For me the mandolin is easier because I have smaller hands, so the smaller neck is helpful. However, the mandolin is technically very demanding. I took Classical guitar and found bar chords holding down 4 5 strings with my little finger excruciatingly difficult.

Somehow despite four pairs of strings, it is easier to play the mandolin.

[farmerjones]

But didn't you find it hard to understand harmony on the violin? I feel that my harmonic limitations come from the limitations of the guitar compared to the piano - it's easier to hear chords that you can play.

I learned early on in my fiddle/violin journey to check my intonation with an adjacent open string, so i was familiar with double stops and drones earlier than they typically teach that stuff. Then playing in the background at a Bluegrass jam I could hear harmonies just about everywhere I put my fingers. It wasn't until decades later, learning piano that I learned about chord inversions. How, especially the simple I, IV, V progressions, in G, D, and C, there's harmonic thirds and fifths everywhere. The trick was if you find you're playing a third or a fifth high or low of the root, you must maintain your interval. Otherwise yes, it sounds bad. I was playing rootless chords, and didn't even know it.

[catmandu2]

I was playing rootless chords, and didn't even know it.

When we start awakening to the concept that - all of the partials and bits and fragments we've been doodling around with all our lives are all connected, somehow, and then begin fitting it all together, linking, interrelating - it's rather a revelation.

One way to express the relative "harder/easier" comparison thing occurred to me - after all this instrument discussion: what is the "best" heuristic? The hardest (most challenging) one, right ?

[k0k0peli]

One way to express the relative "harder/easier" comparison thing occurred to me - after all this instrument discussion: what is the "best" heuristic? The hardest (most challenging) one, right ?

Challenging tasks and tough goals are excellent. It helps if they're achievable. "A man's should must exceed his reach, or what's a heaven for?" "You've got to have a dream / if you don't have a dream / how you gonna have a dream come true?" But at what effort, for what price? I'd better not practice on banjo while my wife's asleep. But yeah, we learn the most by stretching, learn about the subject, and about ourselves. We learn how close we can approach a precipice without falling off. Or -- we fall off. Oops. (I'll leave that metaphor hanging.)