Hi everyone!
I'm a longtime country/bluegrass fan looking to maybe start playing the mandolin. Here's a little backstory on me: I played violin when I was pretty young, about 4th grade or so, and then kinda gave it up until 11th grade when I started again but never really stuck with it long enough to get really good. I've gotten back into guitar a little bit lately too (really only know some chords and simpler tunes that I like, but it's hard to follow stave when I don't know the notes very well on guitar), but I've known how to read music since I was little since I started with the violin and have been singing in school and church choirs since middle school (I'm in my 30s now) so the music never really went away.
I was watching a livestream of a Irish bluegrass band I love called We Banjo 3 (maybe you've heard of them? They're amazing!) and when the fiddle player said the mandolin was tuned just like a fiddle I was hooked! Now for the past few days I've been looking up everything I can about the mando, and I think it would be a bit easier to play than fiddle and guitar but still have the fiddle feel... if that makes sense. My musical heroes are all fiddle players: Martie Maguire of The Chicks (the first country band I was obsessed with, and still am ), Alison Krauss, Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek, and most recently Fergal Scahill of We Banjo 3. The mandolin seems like a fun middle ground and something different.
I've looked around at some sites to see what would be a good starter mandolin and I found this link https://www.elderly.com/products/eld...26854302777408 from mandolessons.com. Is that a good price? Should I wait to see if pricing goes down? I'd like to find something that was already setup and ready to play as I don't live by any music stores really except for maybe Guitar Center. (I'm in Minnesota.) So, what do you all recommend? Also, are there any lesson/tune books that you like that I could use to learn to play country/bluegrass/traditional songs?
Thanks!
Bookmarks