Hi,
I play violin and I've been learning ukulele strumming and chords. The problem is I can't get my head around the ukulele tuning, even with the low G. I'm so used to fifths tuning I can't imagine playing melody with any other tuning.
So I got the Aquila GDAE set and put them on my ukulele, but then I found chords were much harder than with ukulele tuning. I don't know if it's because my ukulele neck is much wider or what, but I found it quite hard. So I went back to standard ukulele tuning (with low G). But it's really frustrating for me to not be able to play melody. I also found the nylon E string didn't sound so good.
So now I'm wondering if I should try mandolin? I googled about beginner mandolins and an entry-level Kentucky brand would be in my budget. But with mandolin I'm worried about the steel strings being hard to fret, especially with double strings.
Also my main use of the ukulele is to strum and sing along. it seems the uke is more suited for that than the mandolin. I do like bluegrass music but I don't want to be limited to chopping.
I read about a mandolele but I'm not sure those are still available. So basically i'm curious if others think I should just stick to strumming uke and play melody on the violin. Or if I should give mandolin a try. And is it hard for fiddle players to learn Mandolin? I've read that it would help me learn double stops on the fiddle.
Cheers
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