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My dad gave me an old mandolin this weekend (an asian-made Harmony, which is fine enough for me to learn on a bit). I have a guitar/uke background so I took to chording it fairly quickly but I'm having an issue with my bottom E string. The top E string sounds clear but the bottom has a nasty metallic twang when struck open that basically disappears when fretted in the 2nd fret or lower. The string isn't hitting anywhere I can tell, not rubbing in any weird spots as far as I can see. Is this probably just "bad instrument being bad" or is there some other common stuff to try that might work it out?
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Jun 11, 2018 15:35
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Coohoolin posted:So I was thinking of doing a YouTube channel about my development as a self taught mandolinist. I already teach guitar and mandolin and I seem to have a knack for explaining stuff, and I've met with conservatory people through my dad who've all said I've done very well for being self taught. I'm thinking selections of pieces I use to practice, fingering positions, practice methods and exercises, stuff like that. I'd also include tabbed out transcriptions of classical pieces for folks who'd like to play some but might not be that great at sight reading. Is this something people here might be interested in following? I would love to practice picking on something other than jigs. I think if you found a perspective on it that went deeper or beyond the mandolessons guy, you would definitely find an audience. At least I would watch.
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Jul 4, 2018 17:01
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Awesome!
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Aug 30, 2018 01:03
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I watched the video and printed out the sheet music before the long weekend, but didn't get a chance to sit down and really dig into it yet. So I can't speak to how well it all fits together yet, but I'm excited to give it a go hopefully this week. I'm not sure how useful having you go through the song note for note will be for me, personally, but going straight through while following along your tabs is really awesome. Also the Sheet Music link is broken but not too tough to site search for. https://imslp.org/wiki/File:BWV1004.pdf Thanks! This kind of stuff is right up my alley.
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Sep 4, 2018 16:13
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Coohoolin posted:So how's everyone's picking going? Learned any cool new tunes? I liked that Bach piece so much, I actually bothered to learn to read proper music onto the fretboard and have been working through a book of violin etudes for the past few months. It actually wasn't too bad once I set my mind to do it, but I'd played treble clef in band and piano plenty growing up, so it was really just forcing myself to sit down with it.
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Dec 12, 2018 21:18
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I'll look into those! My wife, a church pianist, roped me into playing the melody to "People Get Ready" on Sunday and I learned that as long as you stay in key and on beat nobody knows the difference when you completely mangle a bridge.
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Dec 17, 2018 21:45
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Truss rod adjustment under the little plate on the peg head.
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Feb 2, 2019 01:40
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Yeah, but think of how much money you'll save on amplification! I actually ended up buying a tenor guitar for just this reason, because my brain likes playing in 5ths but I also really love fingerpicking. I'm playing the mando in front of people for the first time in a couple of weeks, and I'm pretty excited. Nothing fancy, just some Christmas carols out of the methodist hymnal with my wife playing piano. But it's been nice working on simple ornamentation to spice up slower melodies (and an excuse to really focus on my tremolo).
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Nov 22, 2019 20:28
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Coohoolin, it's been a long time since you posted it, but I'm going to try and put your Allemande tab into Musescore this week if I can get some downtime while I'm still working from the office. If I actually get it done, I'll post a PDF. I spent the past couple of weeks working up a really pretty arrangement of Let There Be Peace on Earth for the church my wife works at, only to have them cancel services through Easter. So it goes!
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Mar 19, 2020 15:29
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If you are just looking for some online resources, MandoLessons is a wonderful free resource. If it's the Mike Marshall thing in particular you are interested in, I looked into it a fair bit when I was last on a serious mando kick and most places I read up on it made his course sound like the real deal. People on the mandolin forums spoke well of it. I ended up going with in-person lessons instead, to give you an idea of how long ago this was.
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Feb 9, 2021 05:33
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I picked up the Mel Bay classical book on a whim on sale one day and it's been amazing. https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Man...19530727&sr=8-5 I drift in and out of mandolin, because I just don't vibe very hard on bluegrass any more, but there are a lot of different places to take the instrument if you're curious. Also, you can poke around Mandolin Cafe's classical/italian forum. There are people there who've made a life's work of tracking down and scanning turn-of-the-century popular mando/guitar scores. There's usually a dropbox link floating around with more music in it than you could work through in a lifetime.
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Apr 27, 2021 14:44
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Bud posted:Gonna go back and read the whole thread but just saying I'm really excited to have picked up a mando after wanting one for like 20 years! My 150 is a peg. I can pull it out and take a pic when I get home if it would be helpful.
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May 16, 2021 19:12
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One inch long, about 3/8 diameter at the spot where it should be catching. Color matches the bridge. Good luck finding it and enjoy it, I adore mine.
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May 17, 2021 11:58
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Necro/cross posting from the guitar thread: More music! I threatened you all with pre-bluegrass mandolin, and here we are. I got my SM57 clone and wanted to record something on it, so I pulled out the easiest thing I could find. A man named Stellario Cambria wrote an actual boatload of mandolin orchestra music around the beginning of the jazz age, when the mandolin was still very much an Italian, eating pizza on a gondola in a movie, kind of thing. By all accounts Stellario traveled around the NY region publishing and teaching, popping up in news articles here and there.  Our little friend here is learning Bacio D'Angelo (Angel's Kiss), which is what I've also played. So if you're wondering about the relative difficulty of this, 8-year-old Anna figured it out 100 years ago. So make a pizza, pour a glass of wine, and waltz with your sweetie. Steal a kiss and thank Mr Stellario Cambria. https://soundcloud.com/matt-p-647926275/bacio-dangelo (Also, you may thank me for not playing the repeats.)
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Aug 17, 2021 20:38
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You sound great! It's awesome to put yourself out here for everyone to hear. I'm no teacher or expert, but one thing that kind of jumped out at me, because it's a thing I've had to really work on (as a bedroom solo player, too): If you can find a metronome that you can change the meter on, so it makes a different click on 1, that's very handy. I hear a few times in your songs (and believe me it's an easy habit to fall into when you do most of your playing alone) you can rush through your holds into the next measure. Like, some of those dotted quarters in King of the Fairies sound like come out fast. And when you aren't playing with other people, you don't even notice. It also helps to count those measures out loud to yourself. "1& 2& 3 4&" On my phone, the Soundbrenner app has a metronome that lets you change the pitch of each click, and it's very handy. I think it's still free. Great stuff, keep going! Your tone is really nice.
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Jan 17, 2022 19:31
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Tempo is how many bpm you are playing at. BPM is "beats per minute" which is exactly what it sounds like. 60 bpm is exactly one click per second. 120 bpm is a click every half second. Pretty much universally, the best advice you get is "play a lot with a metronome." If you ask experienced folks what they wish they knew when they started, it was "start playing earlier with a metronome." Your King of the Fairies is at around 80 bpm, so you would set the metronome (you can even just google metronome to get one) to 80 and play your song, really working hard to match up with the clicks. You can get a feel for it by doing exactly what you said, play quarter notes. Don't even play a scale or a song, just downpick GGGG DDDD AAAA EEEE AAAA DDDD GGGG back and forth over and over. Focus on keeping time in your right hand, don't do anything in the left but support your instrument. Then step up to cross picking eighth notes. GgGgGgGg DdDdDdDd etc. Try to play them straight, then swing them a bit, just get the feel. Then try your song. If you know what a triplet is (three notes over one or two beats), think of 6/8 and 9/8 as feeling like triplets in 2/4 or in 3/4. picture the dancers' feet landing on the upbeat. So 6/8 comes out feeling like BAH dah dah Bah dah dah and 9/8 is Bah dah dah Bah dah dah Bah dah dah. If you go back and listen to some of them with this in mind, it makes a lot more sense. Sorry if I explain stuff you already know!
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Jan 17, 2022 21:05
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 17:57 |
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One BIG thing to help your speed, go back and watch your video and see how far your fingers come off the fretboard. You want to keep them close so they have less ground to cover getting back down. This did get me to drag the girl out of her case for the first time in a couple of years since I've been off in jazz/classical guitar land, so forgive my .. basically everything. But compare my finger lift to yours. There's where your speed comes from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=689wX7wmXDQ You can also make fun of my finger planting/picking, a bad habit at this point I'm unlikely ever to break. Your right hand beats the hell out of mine. e: Another thing to think about/work on for left-hand speed, when you have a run that goes like 0 2 3 5 3 2 leave your fingers down on the 2nd and 3rd frets all the way through. That way you don't need to refret those notes. When you play the note on the 5th fret with your ring finger, you should still be holding down fret 2 with your index and 3 with your middle. Then coming back down the scale are just lift offs. Cleaner legato, lets you do pull-offs as an ornament if you want, and just all around less opportunity for error. Sound great, keep going! Huxley fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Jan 26, 2022 |
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Jan 26, 2022 20:40
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