Originally Posted by
mandocrucian
ABSOLUTELY! It's ALL ONE BIG INSTRUMENT. And that instrument is your brain, folks!
In spite of the different neck length, register, and tuning/fingering, I would say going mandolin>guitar is a lot friendlier than mandolin>fiddle. Physically, than hands and fingers are doing essentially the same thing on guitar as on mandos. But, you put that bow in your other hand, that in itself outweighs having the same LH fingerings in the difficulties.
At the outset, I would say...just play the guitar as a "big mandolin in a alternate tuning". Start playing ALL tune tunes you know on mandolin on guitar, and stay away from notation and tab. Your brain already knows them. Just follow your ear...the brain will sort out the "translation" (onto the new neck) on its own!. The various fingerboard patterns/scale will start to transfer over intuitively and it gets easier and easier to find the tunes on the new neck.
After some time, you will start to play the guitar more and more like a guitar, but why start from start/square 1 when you can take a guitar detour from mando exit #7?
Why do you think mandolin playing by doubling non-mando "primaries" (instruments) is so interesting? Ian Anderson, Martin Carthy, Ry Cooder, David Lindley, Richard Thompson, Johnny Winter, Steve Earle, etc. It's because they are just adapting what they do on their main instrument onto a mandolin!
(Classical flute players, until more recently, would rag on Ian Anderson and criticize his playing - but the thing they could never seem to figure out was that he was going for something totally different!...so much of Ian's early stuff was obviously electric blues guitar and blues harmonica lines put onto flute. That prissy classical articulation and tone would have sounded ridiculous in a rock setting!)
Same thing might be said of the "real" pedal steel players dissing Jerry Garcia's steel playing. If they were so effing great.....why couldn't they think up Jerry's "Teach Your Children" solo that they would often rag on?
I've messed with my own neural wiring for decades.... playing organ bass pedals and drums with my feet under a mandolin. Playing mandolin & tenor banjo (and a bit of electric bass) left-handed on left-handed instruments. And it does stretch your brain; you can physically feel it. And when I took up flute, I did it by playing simple tunes I already knew on other instruments, and that instrument has always "followed the ear" because of the intial data downloading's. So when I say, "expand your brain and your hands will follow", I know it is true from first-hand experience. (Or you can ask someone like Ry Cooder, or Lindley...)
The idea that every instrument should be kept in its own little pigeonhole and played without influence from other instruments is so fallacious.
PUT YOUR EAR IN CHARGE!
Niles H
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