Michael Gowell
Nov-26-2006, 6:21pm
This may be absurdly elementary to many, but it helped me a bunch. #Perhaps because I started on guitar many decades ago, I became used to fretting the strings with my fingers crossing the fretboard at a right angle and coming down on the string from directly above. #This approach on a mandolin proved, for me, quite difficult to execute cleanly on closed chords when I played up to speed. #Eventually I saw the 2-disc DVD with John Hartford and Sam Bush teaching Bill Monroe's style, and noticed that on disc 1 Mr. Monroe's fingers usually angled DOWN to their intended destination - that is each finger was pointing not across the fingerboard towards the player's face [with the fretting hand directly opposite the frets being played] but rather the fretting fingers pointed more towards the mandolin's body, at a 45-degree (or greater) angle to the fretboard [with the fretting hand closer to the peghead than the fretting fingertips.] #Obviously this is possible on mando but not guitar because the mando's neck is so much thinner. #There are two benefits to this "angled" approach to fretting. #One is that the fretting fingertip no longer has to approach the string from directly above and thus this "angled" approach is much more forgiving of possible interference between the fretting fingertip and adjacent strings. #The other benefit is that many closed chords feel less crowded and are thus easier and more forgiving of less-than-perfect fingering. #At least it seems that way to me...