Playing fifths

[BradB]

How do you generally play fifths on the mandolin? I found some instruction on this in a Simon Mayor book, and I have found some bits here and there, but I still struggle with it sometimes.

For playing a note a fifth higher, I can just flatten out my finger to get the next higher string. But to play a note a fifth lower I either need to move my finger down a string, which is slow, or I use a different finger, which works well for some things but seems not possible for others.

I rarely run into fifths in the old time fiddle tunes that I usually play, but I've been working in the new Marilynn Mair book and finding that I often struggle with playing the fifths there. It's a great book, but one thing missing is which fingers to use for playing these fifths. Some suggested fingerings for those parts would be helpful.

[Santiago]

Yeah, sometimes you have to reach over. Fifths are fairly simple the play after some practice, but you don't normally want to move fifths up and down in Western music. Parallel fifths gives a bit of a weird sound, so you don't see a lot of them. It's good to mix them up with thirds, fourths, sixths, etc. The classic fiddle move is going from open fifths to hammer on the lower note a major third above (fourth fret), and then pulling it off back to open.

[ChrisWallace]

Hi,

If I'm playing the fifth fret on the A string (D) and then the next note is the fifth fret on the D string (G) what I try to do is play the first note in such a way that I can "roll" my finger down and play the 2nd note with the tip of my finger.

Hope this helps!