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Thread: Mandolin player crossing over to guitar

  1. #26

    Default Re: Mandolin player crossing over to guitar

    P.s. i thought of those particularly wrt their portability/packability - i.e. historically they were often slagged by mule or what not. For summers I often had a chrngo hanging off the backpack.

    *I just returned to gtr a couple of weeks ago, after 14 years away. Feels amazing.

  2. #27
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    Default Re: Mandolin player crossing over to guitar

    Quote Originally Posted by Peewee View Post
    I rarely use TablEdit these days, but I opened it in TablEdit and the free TEFview (both on Windows) and the MIDI played fine. Technical issue, I guess. You're right about the key signature. It's obviously a transposing mistake. Guitarists typically play it in the key of D and he forgot to change the key signature, so the tablature is correct, but the notation is bizarre. Changing the key signature is an easy fix in TablEdit. I think it's an aberration though and there aren't many mistakes in the transcriptions/arrangements.
    Perhaps more important to the topic of the thread is the arrangement. There are at least two reasons to play this tune in the traditional key.



    Firstly, it moves the lead guitar out of first position, creating distance between the lead guitar and the backup. Doc Watson recorded it in D, capoed at the 2nd fret. Tab banks, of course, notate it in C, with the result that guitarists often leave the capo off, creating a somewhat muddy sound in the presence of a second guitar. Yet parts of this arrangement, especially the beginning, are an octave too low for a good and clear sound.

    Secondly, the key of F offers a wealth of closed three or four note chords for the accompaniment. The keys of C and D are not as rich in that respect.

    I recall a jam about 25 years ago. There were two guitarists, me and another guy who was really into Bluegrass lead guitar, and knew the styles of White, Rice, and CrrY and others, inside out. I called Beaumont Rag in F and much to my dismay he clamped on a capo at the fifth fret, playing out of C forms, thereby missing the point of the higher key. Afterwards he expressed surprise at my handling of that difficult key uncapoed. I explained that I was simply familiar with that key; it was the second key I learned on the guitar.

    You’ll (you= TS) find that a lot of TABs in A and D presuppose the use of a capo. At least in the beginning, explore the possibilities of playing open. And explore other keys, e.g., a halfstep higher (more ear, less fingers).

    There are guitarists who reduce everything to the keys of G and C with the aid of a capo, resulting in numbing sameness, and also depriving them of the possibilities that the open A and d strings
    sometimes offer. My favorite fiddle tune in A, Brilliancy (as recorded by Howdy Forrester), requires the use of the open e’-string (frankly, that’s one of the tunes that made me take up the mandolin). I don’t play that many fiddle tunes on guitar, but I do play St Annes’ Reel (D, uncapoed, 2nd chord A7, not G!), Sailor’s Hornpipe (Bb, also uncapoed), the Gold Rush (A, uncapoed) and Arkansas Traveler, in a very guitaristic arrangement.

  3. #28
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    Default Re: Mandolin player crossing over to guitar

    Quote Originally Posted by mandocrucian View Post
    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
    My attitude to this is a bit different, possibly because I went from guitar to mandolin. My idea is that you play several instrumentsin order to broaden either your range of expression or your own role in an ensemble. My first motive for taking up the mandolin, after ten years of guitar, was to be able to play the fiddle tunes I already knew from a Howdy Forrester album, in their proper octave, without those awkward and frequent string changes. Many devices work differently on the two instruments; PO's have more snap on mando than on guitar, whereas HO's have to be combined with something else to work well on mandolin. Tremolo is a versatile and expressive device on mandolin (if used with economy) but cheap on guitar (think of Don Reno).


    And, of course, the harmonic possibilities are entirely different on the two instruments. Backup guitar is an almost forgotten art in, e.g., Bluegrass. I would advise young players to listen outside the idiom and to older players (like Roy Harvey and Riley Puckett) for ideas on how to devise an accompaniment, e.g., using inversions to create interesting bass line, varying the density and voicing of their chords, and investigating the possibilities af closed vs. open chords. Doc Watson often impressed me (or, moved me) more with his backup than his solo stuff, and the best BG backup I've heard was by a fiddler, Benny Williams.


    Of course, fiddle tunes, with their combination of arpeggios and scalar movement may very well work as etudes for learning the fingerboard, just don't restrict yourself to "easy" keys. My own route was to first learn the fretboard in all major keys in first position, then move up the neck, guided by the realization that the C and F major scales can be played in first position using only three fingers.



    Over the years I've developed a strong sense of what works and inspires me on either instrument. I've written about 70 originals and I guess I play about ten of them on both my instruments (or used to; at my advanced age I'm well aware of my diminishing ability).

  4. #29
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    Default Re: Mandolin player crossing over to guitar

    I am 100% percent with Niles on this subject, that our 'mind's ear' should be the guide, or rather the glue that brings all the instruments together under one roof. I'll play mandolin, piano, guitar and uke with regularity (like all of those this mornning, and most days), and I can move songs around from one to the other without too much thought (and keeping a low bar).

    So, when I snapped a tendon on my left-hand, ring-finger this Summer I was bummed about mando and guitar being off limits, possibly gone. But I knew that somehow someway Music would continue, because it did not exist inside a Weber or a Martin; it lived inside me and I'd find a way to get it back out.

    When the band had a the rare gig this Fall, I wasn't ready to play mandolin, but the guys suggested keyboards. Who knew playing Wurlitzer and Hammond tones was a great fit for our Americanan sound? Amazing part was that I really did not have to do much in the way of translation. Instead I just listened as always and played what needed to be there.

    On a side note: Niles, I finally have acquired 'organ chops', so that helped too.

  5. #30

    Default Re: Mandolin player crossing over to guitar

    My experience is mostly as Ralph's, wrt getting into other instruments. Yet, having my background in classical & flamenco gtr (as well as all the folk, blues, rock et al) enabled me to pick up all other instruments at will - albeit, bowed strings were a separate challenge: classical gtr optimizes the fretting hand, while flamenco gtr optimizes the picking hand. After this, learning idiomatic devices specific to genre and style on other instruments was simply a matter of (careful) listening, as my hands were already prepared for any technique. (However, I disagree that "pull-offs" are any less effective on gtr).

    I suppose my reasons for getting into all the instruments i have is for study and expression. And now at age 60 I've pretty much settled on what styles and sounds are most satisfying. Not to knock mndlns, but neither their bright sound nor tonal range are among the most satisfying for me. When I was interested in BG I liked them a lot. But outside of BG I prefer the sound of cboms.

    When I went back to gtr last month, after 15 year hiatus, it was almost magical - the instrument sounds complete, like a piano. The string sounds that are most satisfying are (flamenco) guitar, and oud, (and any bowed string).

    *everyone with some theoretical knowledge should be st least somewhat functional on a keyboard instrument.

  6. #31

    Default Re: Mandolin player crossing over to guitar

    On multi-instrumentalism -

    If you apply Chomsky/universal grammar theory, in a nutshell: The musical impetus or essence is within. Playing an instrument is the externalization process. Variation in languages is superficial. So it goes with other modalities - plastic arts, music, etc.

    Theoretically the capacity is innate. Devising methods and techniques of externalization enables ability. There are many such approaches. Once you're able to tap into the source, it becomes not "second nature," but perfectly natural.

  7. #32

    Default Re: Mandolin player crossing over to guitar

    I second Banjo Ben, tons of bluegrass guitar tabs with video walkthroughs, pretty decent strumming pattern intros too. Not free, but not expensive either.
    Davey Stuart tenor guitar (based on his 18" mandola design).
    Eastman MD-604SB with Grover 309 tuners.
    Eastwood 4 string electric mandostang, 2x Airline e-mandola (4-string) one strung as an e-OM.
    DSP's: Helix HX Stomp, various Zooms.
    Amps: THR-10, Sony XB-20.

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