Re: Taking up (a) Mandolin
Well, along with JeffD, Allen, and pops!, I took up mandolin a looong time ago. I'll wager, back before you were born. I was amid my teen years, and it was a bit of a fluke, a happy bit of happenstance, much in keeping with my philosophy of life concerning objets trouvés, appreciating that which somehow appears in your path.
A couple years prior, my mom, sensing my affinity for music, gave me a guitar for my birthday. I couldn't make sense of it - six strings, four fingers - the math just didn't work. Plus it was a cheapo cheapo $20 Sears special, and the neck warped so much the strings got to be nearly an inch above the neck at the join. One day I tore the strings off it, strangled it with them, and tossed it into the attic, never to be seen again.
Then one day, my mom came home from her new job, in the management team of a big city Goodwill, and presented me with a funny little instrument in a funny little case - a mandolin. It had just come in off a collection truck, and she snapped it up for $75. It was a Gibson plain A, pumpkin finish, late teens most likely. I'd never seen nor heard nor heard of such a thing before. It took me some time to figure out what it was. I looked it up in the Oxford Companion to Music, and in the mere two paragraphs devoted to this "instrument of minor importance," I gleaned the fact that it was tuned like a violin. That was a BIG help. I got a violin pitch pipe, tuned it right, and began to bang away on it.
Four set of double strings was a one-to-one correspondence with my four fingers that made perfect mathematical sense. The double strings made it sound pretty all by itself. That kept me interested in it long enough to learn how to play it. I'd go into the field across the street where I wouldn't bother anybody - and no one would bother me - and slowly began to sort it out. Mel Bay's book of mandolin chords and a few song books of bands whose songs I knew - The Band, Traffic, Jethro Tull, Lovin' Spoonful, The Beatles - provided me with much musical education. (That's the time period. Long before the interweb made information sources so numerous and readily available.) Coordinating these two information streams - songs with chord notation and the chord diagrams to translate them into useful form - led me to figure out a lot of basic music theory as well as playing technique. The Band's music in particular broadened my horizons immensely. I learned it was better to find the chords that fit the song idea than to fit the song into standard chord progressions. It took me a while to realize that's what Robbie Robertson was doing, but once I did, my songwriting made a great leap forward, upward, and onward. In time, the mandolin became what I called my "reality interface." It was the means for me to produce in external, physical form the sounds and ideas that existed in internal, mental form.
It's been a long, strange trip along a long and winding road. I've engaged in a variety of endeavors during my life, but I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't had an instrument to express my musical musings. The mandolin has provided an immeasurable amount of enjoyment, adventure, companionship, expression, and just plain fun. Nothing else to which I've applied myself has proven so rewarding. It's also been daunting, frustrating, confounding, infuriating, and exasperating, but still rewarding.
Originally Posted by
Sherry Cadenhead
I don't dare try a mandola, mandocello, etc., etc.
Oh, I have no doubt you will, someday. As well you should. But right now you've got yourself a fine mandolin, and you'd do well to explore its possibilities and see where they lead you. But if you should ever be so inclined ... All I want to say is my mandola is a wonderful, magical, magnificent piece of craftsmanship, my best instrument, even more so than the A-2 I just got. It's just so resonant; it's always still ringing when I put it in the case. I should play it more.
But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. - Dennis Miller
Furthering Mandolin Consciousness
Finders Keepers, my duo with the astoundingly talented and versatile Patti Rothberg. Our EP is finally done, and available! PM me, while they last!
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