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Thread: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

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    Default New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    I bought a mandolin a couple of years ago. A cheap one since I wanted to experiment. I have played guitar on and off for nearly 30 years. (And I should be better, but oh well).

    I found some mando chords online and some are hand busters for the little neck and my hands. That's all I really know.

    How should I approach this similarly or differently than the guitar? (Bass players get all weird about guitar players that play a bass like a guitar. I'm sure you all have similar concerns). What to think about, what to avoid?

    Any good resources online?

    thanks

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    harvester of clams Bill McCall's Avatar
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Mandolins are plucked violins, not little guitars. Great online resources including a classic Mike Marshall youtube for beginning ergonomics. Search for a player you like, there will probably be an online lesson somewhere. Artistworks and Peghead Nation are subscription sites, but there are plenty of free lessons around.

    btw, what kind of music are you wanting to play?
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    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    In a way it depends on what style of guitar player you were. If you were a chord-centric player, for example, you come with the prejudice that the melody is someone else's job. That music is a necklace of beads (chords) on a chain (melody).

    (I played woodwinds prior to mandolin, so i came with the opposite prejudice that backup chords and harmony were someone else's job.)


    It is not so much us getting all weird, its really that you will limit yourself. Some of that is inevitable, but if you conceive of a mandolin as being without limits, you will at least push back against the natural tendency to play guitar on the mandolin.

    So it might be good to start from the very beginning. Get Don Julin's great book Mandolin For Dummies. Pretend you have no clue as to which end gets hot first. Any lessons from your guitar playing will be a bonus of course, but pretend you know nothing.

    For example, fingering. Guitar is fingered chromatically - every finger gets one fret. Mandolin is fingered diatonically, each finger a whole note in the scale, i.e. each finger generally covers two frets. So right from the get-go there is a difference to wrestle out.

    I am betting that your adventure into mandolinning is, among other things, going to expand your guitar abilities. Life is like that.
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    I guess for mandolin, I'd like to play along with others. There's a jam where they do "old time" music. Gospel and easy bluegrass stuff. I took my guitar last time but with virus haven't been back.

    I play acoustic guitar and sing on top of it so do a good bit of rhythm. I play all sorts of stuff but what I have played on the mandolin has been more three chord stuff with all major chords. Sorta.

    After starting this thread I found a nice lady that had a bunch of videos pretty music exactly where I am...coming from guitar. I can chunk out some chords to match a guitar player.

    @Jeff D, what do you mean about each finger covers two frets? G and G# or something else?

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    Registered User Steve_Zee_64's Avatar
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Hi

    I have the same Background (coming from Guitar). I started Mandolin in December 2020 when our Company Band decided to try to cover Steve Earle's "Galway Girl".
    Of course I had to look for a Mandolin first and then figuring out the Chords and playing Technique.

    There are many many many Clips to find on Youtube "how to play this or that on Mandolin" and if you search for, you'll get quick into the Mandolin Stuff due to your Background.

    Good Luck & have Fun! :-)
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    There are as many different ways to play mandolin as there are ways to play guitar. Four finger chords are a pain when you first start playing mandolin. Double stops and three string chords work well rhythmically when played on the G D and A strings. Listen to some players and decide who's style you like and settle in. You will likely find either some lessons or tutorials available. Enjoy the process. R/
    I love hanging out with mandolin nerds . . . . . Thanks peeps ...

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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Similar situation here. Decades of guitar, then, while learning to flatpick fiddle tunes on guitar via Bryan Sutton on Artistworks (he’s an excellent teacher) somehow I made the connection to fiddle tunes on a mandolin. My initial search for lessons online lead to Mandolessons.com where Baron Collins-Hill had me playing Angeline The Baker in the first hour. His lessons are free with donation options. His style of playing and teaching is a good fit for me. And he has a a very long list of tunes to dive into. I’ve been sorting through them finding the ones that suit my beginner skill level. I would also add that it’s essential to have a properly set up mandolin to play.

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    Registered User Randi Gormley's Avatar
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    It's already been noted that a mandolin is not a little guitar played upsidedown. Hand position is also not the same as guitar. Good guitar technique is to have your hand perpendicular to the fretboard when playing. That's bad mandolin technique. You hold the mandolin like a fiddle/violin, with fingers at an angle (a quick way to see what it should feel like is to hold the mandolin up to your chin as if it was a fiddle and see where your hands lay along the fretboard. Try to copy that). As for two frets per finger, that means your left hand will use the first finger for the first two frets, the second finger for the third and fourth frets, that kind of thing. They're a lot closer together than guitar frets so it makes sense. Mike Marshall has a Youtube on how to hold the mandolin -- it's not a cheat or eye roll to watch it. a lot of people don't hold the mandolin correctly when they first start because they try to look at the fretboard while they play (also bad technique) which turns the body more horizontal than vertical. And depending on the genre, you may have to expand into melody playing instead of chording. Certainly for Old Time, mandolin players play melody a lot. I've played ITM (Irish Traditional Music) for close on 18 years and i know three (count 'em, three) chords, and they're all two-finger chords. And I never use them while playing in sessions except on the rare occasions when we're playing polkas. Mandolin also is designed for tremolo and that's fun to play around with as well. Stuff like hammer-ons and pull-offs and harmonics will translate from guitar so don't hesitate to add them to your mandolin repertoire. Moving to mandolin means you've opened up pandora's box --all sorts of stuff will fly out!
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Here's the Mike Marshall video -

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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    If you want to play melody, delve into fiddle tunes. They are a great help in learning fretboard positions beyond scales and arpeggios.
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    Registered User CWRoyds's Avatar
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    I came from guitar to mandolin.
    My advice is to forget about relating your guitar to mandolin.
    Just take it as a totally different instrument.
    Learn the mandolin chords, and mandolin scales/arpeggios.

    Then get some tablature or notation of fiddle tunes to get some tunes under your belt.
    I have also found success at just learning mandolin tunes by ear while watching videos.

    I found that playing mandolin actually made my guitar playing better.
    For one thing, now that I am at home within the tiny fret spacings, I can zoom around on the guitar above the 12th fret with ease.
    I also started using the mandolin picks on the guitar which is an interesting experiment.
    I switch back and forth between mandolin picks and guitar picks.
    I do use the same 1.4-1.5mm thickness on all picks, regardless of mandolin or guitar pick shapes.

    It is an interesting journey.
    Make sure you spend time on both instruments.
    You will find that they compliment each other, and give you a new world of acoustic voices to use in your music.
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    Registered User DavidKOS's Avatar
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    As a player of both guitar and mandolin, I appreciate all the good advice from the previous postings.

    I ask one more question to the OP:

    What style of mandolin playing do you want to learn, or, is there a specific musical goal?

    I ask because it may affect what mandolin you want to buy and exactly how you approach playing it.

    Quote Originally Posted by JeffD View Post
    In a way it depends on what style of guitar player you were.
    ............

    So it might be good to start from the very beginning. Get Don Julin's great book Mandolin For Dummies.
    That's a good place to start (although to my personal taste and experience, there's not quite enough Italian style presented) since the book is a really good overall intro to mandolin.

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    The Amateur Mandolinist Mark Gunter's Avatar
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Thousands of members here were in your shoes at some point, guitar players drawn to the mandolin. It took me a year or so to sort of begin to find a mandolinny voice for myself, as in the beginning I just mostly tried to translate guitar riffs and licks to mandolin. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s only a start. Like JeffD says, don’t limit your thinking or attitude re: mandolin.

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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Glad I found this thread. I am getting back into mandolin with decades of guitar behind me, though I have flirted with mandolin for about 20 years. I find that I keep defaulting to chromatic fingering. I took up tenor banjo five years ago and that too reinforces the chromatic fingering habit (but it got me back into mandolin, got me thinking in fifths tuning again, and helps me with chord shapes).

    Any suggestions on breaking out of guitar-centric fingering? Is it just a matter of repeatedly playing scales with diatonic fingering?

  18. #15

    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Quote Originally Posted by L50EF15 View Post

    Any suggestions on breaking out of guitar-centric fingering? Is it just a matter of repeatedly playing scales with diatonic fingering?
    After nearly 40 years of guitar I took up mandolin last November because my wife said I had “too many” guitars. Phht, too many, how is that possible? But, she did agree to let me buy a mandolin.

    I lashed out and bought an instruction book (Hal Leonard) and am working my way through it. The two frets per finger thing comes naturally for me now.

    Like an earlier poster, I think it’s improving my guitar work, as I had to REALLY loosen my grip on the pick to get both strings to sound.

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    Registered User Mandobart's Avatar
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Quote Originally Posted by Flat6Driver View Post
    I guess for mandolin, I'd like to play along with others. There's a jam where they do "old time" music. Gospel and easy bluegrass stuff. I took my guitar last time but with virus haven't been back.
    I came to mandolin about 14 years ago after over 30 years of violin and guitar. Playing in a weekly jam as you described above is the single best thing that propelled me forward on mandolin. It helped that I knew the left hand position and fingering from violin, but I'm certain it was the steady playing music with other people that really paid off. Most guitar players I know play at home, alone, and use books/DVD's/online lessons. Most develop very slowly musically. If at all possible, you've got to find a few people that you can play live with on a regular basis.

    In a year of mandolin playing I was much better on mandolin than I had been on guitar after 10 years (and I started guitar at 13 when it's much easier to learn than at 44 when I started mandolin!) and I KNOW that came from the weekly jams. Another major plus was the cross training effect mandolin had on my guitar and violin skills. I became a better musician all around from taking up mandolin and regularly playing with other people.

    You may have already learned that the mandolin, with its high tension dual string courses, will just laugh at your guitar calluses and shred them off like a cheese grater.

    You also may have already learned that a cheapo beginner mandolin will not play or sound at a level that will keep your interest or developing skill. Absolutely find Rob Meldrum's free setup guide here and make your instrument fight you as little as possible. And recognize that since mandolins are typically carved and cater to a smaller group of people, a decent quality mandolin will cost twice what the same quality flattop guitar would. Playing a $300 mandolin is like playing a $150 guitar.

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    Worlds ok-ist mando playr Zach Wilson's Avatar
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Coming from guitar myself, the best advice for learning mandolin I was ever given was:

    Learn to play Mandolin, a fretted fiddle, not a tiny guitar.

  21. #18

    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    The right hand (pick hand) is super important to playing mando. So, if your guitar playing involved some form of flat picking UDUDUD strokes for riffs, leads, etc, then that'll serve you very well. If you lean towards finger picking, then you'll want to really focus on mando right hand technique. Also, learn to love tremolo and practice a good sound at all speeds. Also, mando is an important percussion instrument, chops, muted rhythm stuff. Holding the pick right is essential, a thick pick is better for most styles.

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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Mandolins are mandolins, not little guitars nor plucked fiddles, tell me how Monroe, Wakefield, Duffy( maybe a littlle ) or McRendoyls was a violin

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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    When I started playing the mandolin in 1967, after 10 years of guitar, I did so with a clear purpose: I wanted to play fiddle tunes, rags and polkas, that didn’t lie very comfortably on the guitar, e.g., because of their frequent string changes. What I brought from the guitar was a deepened knowledge of music, e.g., keys and their scales. So I never used tables or other graphical means to learn chords on he mandolin. I simply worked them out from my knowledge of their construction and the tuning of the mandolin.

    When learning the guitar I proceeded systematically, key by key, starting in the key of C and traveling along the circle of fifths in both directions: C, F, G, Bb, D,… in first position. Realizing that the C and F major scales use only the first three frets in first position it was easy for me to transpose these major scales to higher positions.

    On mandolin I started in several keys at once, avoiding open strings, and transposed the scales mainly to the positions determined by the fretboard markers. On both the guitar and mandolin in time I found a freer approach, e,g., on the guitar I often worked out of chord formations. and on the mandolin from the idea that a one-octave major scale often can be seen as composed of two tetrachords (about) a fifth apart (that, I believe, is the idea behind FFCP). To sum up, learning these two instruments involved learning music, or using whatever theoretical knowledge I already had.

    Of course the functional difference between the two instruments is largely determined by the realization that, in an ensemble, rhythmically and harmonically the mandolin comes on top of everything else. The mandolin is a soprano instrument.

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    String-Bending Heretic mandocrucian's Avatar
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Play the stuff you play on guitar on the mandolin (but use mando fingerings). You want to burn in the sonic associations already in your head with the new fretboard. You can start to play it "mandolinistically" later on.

    I spent years learning to play mando so it sounded (more) like an electric guitar, clawhammer banjo, fiddle, even bagpipes, and don't regret it at all. My goal was to play like the various players I really liked, regardless of their instrument(s). Becoming Monroe-style player #25,877 was not high up on my priority list!

    I took up the mando as a (supposedly) "temporary" compromise instrument between trying to be Dave Swarbrick (fiddle) or a Richard Thompson (electric guitar) (tuned like a fiddle but fretted and picked like a guitar) with an intent to switch to either or both once I acquired some technical facility.

    Truthfully, if I had it to do all over again, it would have been: electric guitar AND viola, then alto flute and Hammond B3 organ (with the footpedals).

    NH
    Last edited by mandocrucian; Mar-10-2022 at 2:59pm.

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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Quote Originally Posted by mandocrucian View Post
    Play the stuff you play on guitar on the mandolin (but use mando fingerings). You want to burn in the sonic associations already in your head with the new fretboard. You can start to play it "mandolinistically" later on.

    That's a very strange piece of advice given, e.g., the fact that the "stuff" a guitarist plays largely consists of chords that don't carry over to the mandolin (and that range of a guitar differs substantially from that of a mandolin).

    I see some strange posts on the Café about how to play G-runs on the mando (the issue, of course, is what to play against them- the highest note of a G-run is the lowest note on the mandolin) or the "mandolin analog of boom-chick rhythm". I began my mandolin journey by playing fiddle tunes that I had already transcribed on the guitar but couldn't play comfortably on that instrument (or in their proper range).

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  27. #23
    String-Bending Heretic mandocrucian's Avatar
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    That's a very strange piece of advice given, e.g., the fact that the "stuff" a guitarist plays largely consists of chords that don't carry over to the mandolin (and that range of a guitar differs substantially from that of a mandolin).
    What on earth are you talking about? I guess I'm just too stupid to understand that "mandolin" uses completely different scales and notes, and a completely different way of constructing "chords" (which pitches are used) than a guitar, a piano, fiddle, flute etc. In that cast, "Mandolin" should be a mainstay of Indonesian gamelan groups!

    You know, I learned plenty of Tony Rice, Clarence White, Vassar Clements, Scotty Stoneman and even Mike Auldridge and Bill Keith and Eddie Adcock solos, note for note (or as close as I could come to it) on the mandolin neck, and it ONLY EXPANDED AND ENHANCED my playing! And that's just 'bluegrass'.

    BTW, Doyle Lawson recorded "Walk Don't Run", Gaudreau "Memphis", Jethro ("El Cumbanchero") and Skaggs was at his hottest when he was still enamored of Grappelli, Jethro and Texas swing players. I guess they somehow escaped "mandolin jail" for those transgressions.

    If you want to play the same old Monroe licks ad infinitum, hooray. (for you)

    Ry Cooder and David Lindley say (of playing multiple instruments): IT'S ALL ONE BIG INSTRUMENT! And they are right on target as far as I can see/hear. (I don't see the Dons (Stiernberg or Julin) weighing in on this.)

    The original question was about going from Guitar to play a mandolin. I didn't see anything about "bluegrass mandolin" or any other kind of mando style specified.

    "Whiskey Before Breakfast" has the same (basic) melody regardless what instrument you are playing it on. I didn't know there was "Mandolin Whiskey Before Breakfast" or an "Accordion Whiskey Before Breakfast" or a"Guitar Whiskey Before Breakfast". Isn't amazing you can actually have 8 different types of instruments playing that tune all at the same time???

    My suggestion is PUT THE EAR FIRST! If you already play something...it's already in your HEAD. So put that onto your new second or third instrument. Instead of making everything follow some visual chart of chords, or tablature of scales) etc. Music is AUDITORY at it's root, not some-connect-the-dots picture drawing.

    When (or rather if) you begin learning some other language, it always starts with the same basic thoughts. You don't jump in with your book of verb conjugations and tenses. KISS: "I am hungry."

    "My name is James."
    Mi nombre es James. (Spanish)
    Mein Name ist James. (German)
    Je m'appelle James. (French)
    Mitt namn är James. (Swedish)
    Il mio nome è James. (Italian)[/I]

    Same process, regardless of the language.

    Honestly, I've concluded that it is just a total waste of time commenting on anything on this board. Buh-bye.

    NH

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    Registered User Jairo Ramos's Avatar
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    Amen
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    Default Re: New to mando...coming from guitar...where would you start?

    I don't, in any way, consider myself to be an authoruity. But, if I were starting from where you are, again, I would really work on the chords and really learn them and the notes and I think the picking part would come more easily. I believe that the chords are the foundation and then the tunes come from them. That is just me, though.

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