Chapter 1
Becoming Acquainted with Your Mandolin
In This Chapter
Exploring the mandolinâs anatomy
In March 1979, I was fresh out of high school â wondering what my future would be â when I met my first mandolin. The event changed my life and sent me on an amazing mandolin journey. Since then Iâve been playing, composing, travelling, teaching, recording and now writing about mandolins â because the mandolin is such a wonderful instrument.
In this chapter, I show you just why the mandolin is such a wonderful instrument (as if you didnât already know), describing among other things its great sound, sexy looks (steady, Don!), friendly extended family and musical flexibility.
Riding the Mandolin Wave
In todayâs world of synthesised pop music, smartphone apps and video games, the mandolin is an oasis of low-tech, organic simplicity. Made of wood and strung with steel strings, the mandolin can bring players and listeners enjoyment without the use of the Internet or even electricity. The mandolin is the perfect desert-island instrument as well as one that city-dwellers can use to (re)discover a simpler time with simpler pleasures.
Mandolins have some great advantages, not least of which is that theyâre small enough to fit in an overhead compartment in a plane. What better way to unwind after a stressful business meeting than to go back to your hotel room and play some mandolin music (quietly, of course, unless youâre sure the adjoining rooms are also occupied by mandolin fans!). Try doing that with your piano or cello.
Loving the mandolin sound
For one small instrument, the mandolin can certainly create a number of different but beautiful sounds across a wealth of musical genres:
Old world: Rapid back-and-forth picking (called
tremolo) is the signature sound of the mandolin. This romantic sound dates back to nineteenth-century Italy, where mandolin players serenaded wealthy Venetians as they travelled by gondola (check out Chapter 12).
Country: Some people associate the mandolin with the high lonesome sound of bluegrass. In the 1940s, Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys came out of the hills of Kentucky playing a new form of country music featuring mandolin that helped to shape the course of American music. I describe bluegrass in Chapter 10 and take you on a pre-bluegrass American mandolin adventure of old-time tunes, ragtime and blues in Chapter 9.
Rock: Many people (including me) were drawn to the amazing mandolin sound through its use in pop or rock settings via tracks by Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart or R.E.M.
But, however you got here and wherever you want to take your playing â such as to an Irish pub session (see Chapter 11) or a New York jazz club (check out Chapter 13), or deep into the hybrid style of modern-day master David Grisman and his âDawgâ music (see Chapter 14) â the important thing to know is youâre welcome to hang out as long as you like in the wonderful world of mandolins.
To help you on your musical journey, you need to get to grips with the basics of mandolin playing (see Chapter 4). After all, you need to lay the foundations before you can start to build your repertoire! Mastering the essential right- and left-hand playing techniques is also a key milestone (Chapters 5 and 6 enable you to get there) to aim for before you start to tackle chording methods (see Chapter 7), scales and more advanced techniques (see Chapter 8).
Joining a vibrant community
When you begin to look around, you find that you arenât alone and that more mandolin players are out there than you may have thought. Look around your own town or city for mandolin activity, whether itâs a local bluegrass band performance, or a mandolin club or orchestra.
If you live somewhere that has little or no mandolin activity, you can become part of the growing online mandolin community. Websites such as www.mandolincafe.com
offer lessons, stories and links to just about anything to do with the mandolin. YouTube is another way to see some great performances, get some free lessons or just discover whoâs who in the mandolin world. You canât possibly feel alone amid the huge number of people posting videos of themselves playing the mandolin.
I designed Mandolin For Dummies to get you playing the instrument, so that you too can become part of a worldwide community of mandolin players. To gain some inspiration, flip to Chapter 20 to read about a few mandolin greats, and check out Chapter 21 for tips on entering the buzzing mandolin subculture.
Enjoying a great choice of mandolins
Purchasing a mandolin today is easier than ever before. Gone are the days when the only way to get a mandolin was for you to travel great distances to get to a music shop only to discover that it had only two mandolins to choose from. Along with old-school bricks and mortar shops, today you have lots of online dealers of mandolins with great selections and reputations of having many satisfied customers.
Pacific-rim manufacturing costs have made new high-quality mandolins more affordable than ever before. A quality solid-wood mandolin can cost far less today than a similar instrument did when I was looking for my first mandolin in 1979.
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