Why play Mandolin?

[Ben Milne]

It'd be a lot of time and money going to waste if I was just to let them sit there and collect dust...
Plus I won't get better if I don't.

[Barry Wilson]

I quit smoking in Feb with an electronic cigarette. a few weeks ago I decided to give up the e cig. I sold all my stuff for $250 and went on my local music store website to look at what I would treat myself with that money. They had a mandolin setup for $240 so I went and bought one. I thought it'd be a novelty item for my collection but realized that I love this instrument and I play it more than anything else I own now. My bass really feels ignored the most... but it gets entertained regularly.

after christmas I want to finally invest in a good mandolin. and the fella I sold my other mandolin too loves acoustic type music so I ended up with someone else to jam with.

[JeffD]

Why play mandolin?

Well besides looking at it, and changing the strings, there ain't much else you can do with it.

[journeybear]

Because it is a much better use of time than asking why.

[Gelsenbury]

Because I wanted to learn an instrument, because I had an interest in old-fashioned "lute" music, because I didn't fancy guitar but wanted to play with my guitarist friends, because entry-level mandolins are fairly cheap ... and, most of all, because the mandolin has that magical sound that no other instrument possesses.

[richardbradford]

Why play the mandolin?

...it's optional...and for many of us, it's optional the same way breathing is optional...

[JeffD]

Why play the mandolin? ...it's optional...and for many of us, it's optional the same way breathing is optional...

It didn't start out that way, but boy it sure is that way now. It used to be that music was in my life. Now it is a part of my life. It used to be that I had to make time for playing the mandolin. These days, I have to make time for everything else.

One example. On more than one occation I have skipped a jam session because something important was scheduled after, or for some reason I had to be somewhere at a certain time afterwards. Afterwards. No scheduleing conflict. Just somewhere I am supposed to be after the jam. I revel in the feeling I get at a jam that there is nothing more important than what I am doing, that I can sit here and do this forever. Time stops and the jam is eternal. THERE IS NOWHERE ELSE to be and nothing else to think about. This is life, and the rest of what I do, work, coffee, dinner, is there just to enable this life behind my mandolin to happen.

Its to the point where sometimes I would rather not go at all, than to feel like the jam is merely an appointment in my day book after which I get back to something called life.

[mandroid]

Better accepted than whistling the tune

[JeffD]

Bringing back a zombie thread from almost ten years ago, because it would be interesting to see what our responses and thoughts are now, in the shadow of post covid.

Now with gigs and jam sessions and concerts and parties coming back, it is like a screen door on a submarine, all the music rushing back into my life. I didn't know how empty I have been.

So now I play mandolin to restore myself and to grab something that matters that I can do, and to chase beauty. It is a wonderful time to be alive and already playing mandolin.

[journeybear]

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Oh, and this ...

Because it is a much better use of time than explaining why.

[Frankdolin]

From Jeffd "So now I play mandolin to restore myself and to grab something that matters that I can do, and to chase beauty. It is a wonderful time to be alive and already playing mandolin." I second that emotion!

[Mitch Stein]

Because "How do you stop?"

[GMorgan]

I started out as a violinist when I was 8 years old and fell in love with the instrument. I was actually pretty good, always second chair in the First Violin section of the city youth orchestra. I was never first chair because there was always a petite young lady who could outplay me. And, it wasn't always the same young lady. Still, I was always happy to make second chair. I played the violin for many years, but it was finally put away in a closet when I decided I wanted to be extra cool and play the guitar. I then tried to periodically learn to play guitar for more than 40 years. I even brought my nice Martin Dreadnought with me to practice daily while I lived in a hotel for a year and a half during an out of town work assignment. Every day, after work, from 5:30pm to 6:00pm, I tried to play that guitar. That thirty minute break in my day was reserved for a glass of wine and guitar practice. I never got good at playing guitar, but I did a good job with the red wine. What I rediscovered is that I always think in perfect fifths, and the guitar is not tuned in perfect fifths.

Years later, when I was 60 years old, I attended a wine Gala and a featured violinist played live for us. It was an extraordinary performance. And, after playing, he happened to set at my table. I told him how much I loved his work and that I had once been a violinist. I also mentioned that I had been thinking of restarting lessons on the violin, something that I thought would be fun in my retirement years. He told me that he was going to play again at the same Wine Gala the next year and offered that if I started up my violin lessons, he would play a duet with me in front of that same audience.

A couple months later, after I turned 61, I began lessons with a well respected university violin teacher. The next year, I did attend the same Wine Gala and the professional violinist and I did play a duet. His challenge reintroduced me to the world of performance art.

I kept taking lessons, but I confessed to my violin teacher that I had wished for years that I could learn to play guitar, but I acknowledged how deeply I was entrenched in perfect fifths. She responded that I should think about the mandolin as it was tuned identically to a violin.

In May, 2017, I began to look at mandolins. While standing in the string section of a local music store, I listened to young people banging away, loudly and haphazardly, on guitars in the showroom. I was handed a mandolin by a sales clerk and within perhaps twenty or thirty seconds, I was easily playing J. S. Bach with very few errors. This white-haired older gentleman was showing up the teenagers. Sweet.

On May 30, 2017, I bought my Eastman 515 from a very reputable dealer. It has been a delightful and very natural partnership these last four years. I began to play it for an hour or more every day. Lots of 1960s and 1970s pop, rock, soul, and folk, along with an enjoyable subset of classical.

During the pandemic, my wife and I went into serious quarantine and I suddenly had a whole lot of time to play and play and play. Now that we are fully vaccinated, we do venture out, but I still play for pure pleasure every single day. The mandolin has become my instrument of choice. I cannot think of a more rewarding way to spend my retirement years. And, I am already working on which mandolin comes next.

[chuck3]

I grew up playing various instruments (there was an old bowl-back mando in the house) and eventually became best known playing upright and electric bass. I took up mandolin for real in 2009 and around 2011 had to get serious about it because I got a gig playing someone else's originals and I had no idea what I was doing. I've kept taking lessons from players better than me (recommended) and now, to be honest, I enjoy playing mando more than just about any other instrument. It can be anything you want it to be - folk, rock, Americana, bluegrass, jazz, classical, world music. In the rock band depicted, which covers classic rock, I play the keyboard parts if there are some that need to be covered. That's how cool mando is - you can cover the keyboard parts. I do use effects sometimes, so I'm not a traditionalist, but I believe that from the traditional mando stuff comes the vocabulary to expand and improvise.

[journeybear]

I play the keyboard parts if there are some that need to be covered. That's how cool mando is - you can cover the keyboard parts.

Yeppers. In my old jug band, that was one of fearless leader's ideas - arrange blues songs for our instrumentation. I handled the right hand of the piano, the guitar handled the left (as did the washtub/jug player). It was a very cool sound, indeed.

[Sue Rieter]

Well, I would say that it was calling to me for many years. And finally I answered.

[Dave Hicks]

It's a nice change from all those guitars!

D.H.

[journeybear]

"They're too noisy and crude." (Quoting from a song by Dexy's Midnight Runners, from their fabulous, near-perfect 1982 album (no mandolin) "Too-Rye-Ay.")

[Strabo]

Good topic, interesting comments. This thread has apparently been around for w while...

I came from classical guitar. Then my memory got shaky and I didn’t have that rock-solid memory that allowed me to focus on phrasing the music. I needed something more intuitive, but I really didn’t like the goofy layout of the guitar fretboard. I had originally started with viola many years ago -- and the transparency of tuning in fifths did appeal to me -- so mando was a likely choice. It took me a while to wade through the crap of low-end instruments, but I eventually came up with some outstanding old instruments -- thanks to mucho help from the knowledgeable and friendly folks here at the Cafe. Technique to mid-level competence is reasonably possible for a reasonably motivated individual, and the mandolin is a great joy to me.

I’m now into fiddle (full circle, anyone?), digging its technical challenges and its complementarity with the mandolin. As I build my fiddle licks I reach back to the mandolin for inspiration and illustration of what can be possible. I keep them both side-by-side on my music stand. Sometimes I wish I could play both at the same time...

[Kenny]

Why play mandolin?
Pleasing sound
There’s a great, wide range of music to choose from
Easy load in / load out
Depending on where you live there’s not a lot of competition. e.g. Everybody plays guitar or bass but only a few of us in the whole county play mando.

[catmandu2]

The OP - AndSoItBegandolin - hasn't been active here since 2013. Either they've been woodshedding for 9 years, with no mention of it here, or apparently none of these 95 responses were convincing enough...

*Seriously however I hope the case is more the former and the member is well and playing music.

[journeybear]

While that may be true, it's also true that threads often develop lives of their own, often independent of the OP. The originator may offer guidance and direction along the way, but many times OPs seem to lose interest in threads they've started. We can speculate why, but in the end it may well not matter. In this instance, this thread is currently on its third go-round, having been resurrected for a brief run last May after its original run ended ten years prior. It has been brought back by someone who said, "Good topic, interesting comments." I think that's a fair assessment. Perhaps there's life in the discussion yet, with new voices and minds wishing to contribute. So be it.

However, now I have to wonder, whether thinking about such a philosophical question may lead in quite a different, even opposing direction: why not play mandolin? I think I read in another thread that you'd stopped playing mandolin about ten years ago, about the same time as this thread's initial time period, and are now playing harp mostly. Did your involvement in this thread give rise to thoughts about your involvement with the instrument, or was it a more organic evolution having nothing to do with this discussion? It's not really my or anyone else's business; I just notice and wonder about things as they pass by and attract my attention. I'm not sure why you'd want to hang around here even if you don't play mandolin, though you're not the only one. Perhaps we're such an interesting lot, often willing to discuss all manner of quasi-related and non-related matters, and who wouldn't want to be part of that?

[Eric Platt]

Because I have to.

Longer version - after having a major personal/musical change, felt it was time to go in a new direction than just playing guitar. Fell in with a Finnish-American music group and realized a lot could be done with mandolin and learning from one of the better players out there.

It's been a way to reconnect with friends and get a second band going and has even helped me to where I am now able to lead some jams. It's also lead to me being a better musician where I have been able to transpose tunes for the rest of the band and do the notation.

As to why not play? Well, my first attempt was a good example. After starting back in 2009 (and joining this forum) was going to old time jams where people would repeatedly ask me to put the mandolin down and get my guitar out. Not in a bad way. After less than a year I took the hint and got rid of my mandolins (including a Rigel A natural that's still missed. Stuck to guitar after that until I didn't.

[DavidKOS]

I was already learning string bass, electric bass, guitar and tenor banjo circa 1971; I was in a musical city, New Orleans (and at the time it had zero Bluegrass or ITM music happening); I was from a Sicilian-Italian background; and my grandmother bought me a mandolin and I took to it.

[journeybear]

As to why not play ...

It was kind of a rhetorical question, but you gave it an intriguing answer, after some consideration. And that me to thinking about my own on-again-off-again relationship with the mandolin - though it's mostly been on. But since covid and shutdowns changed everything, and suddenly gigs just disappeared, and I realized I had to quit my job and move out of my place to put myself in a safer environment, and then my duo partner and roommate concentrated on her new duo with her boyfriend and playing guitar instead of ukulele, and gigs stayed gone ... I found myself playing very little, even just for fun, with all those changes and all that piling on. I dunno, seems fun has been in short supply lately.

I have been planning on recording an album, something I've put off for a generation or two, so that's involved sorting out the material, arrangements, and recording protocol - mostly mentally, but some physically. And I finished up the recording phase of a duo project that's been galumphing along for two years, which included getting more familiar with the recording program. And I worked up a rough sketch of a song with my newly-acquired recording skills. So that side of my musicality has been evolving nicely.

I'm experiencing a bit of an uptick recently, though. I got a call to play with the seasonal country-Cajun-bluegrass band, which I quit last year because they weren't using me enough to justify having to deal with the drummer/sound guy's passive-aggressive behavior. But the pedal steel player has decided he can't handle dealing with the traffic, on the drive in from up the Keys and also in Key West, so his loss is my gain. It's only been two weeks but things seem to be going better. I'll bet my reasons for quitting got discussed, because the d/sg has been more cooperative. So far, so good.

Then this past Monday a friend gave me a heads-up about a notice on facebook from a band in Key Largo looking for a mandolin player. When does something like that ever happen? I sent a message to two members of the band, and to the band page, and emailed the band ... nothing. No idea what's going on there. Seems to me if you're actively seeking a new member, you should check for responses once in a while. They sound good, mostly Americana, some blues, so I think it would be a good fit. Hope they get in touch.

So things are looking up. I think.