How many can "think" mandolin?

[Jonmiller]

I started playing plectrum banjo in 1963 (I was 9) and my teachers Don Galvin of vaudville fame and Harvey Walker of the "Wagonmasters" from Knott's taught me to think music, to play what I hear in my head (as far as my current limitations were). In the 80's I took up 5 string banjo and set off to do the same thing-and even though I have some skill I was sorely disappointed, my playing is mostly melody with some memorized Scruggs licks mixed in. Throw in the drone 5th string-certain key changes are impossible and certain chords can bring you to a screeching halt.
# Mandolin is so refreshing, now that I am getting a grasp of the fingerboard, scales and chords and if I know the tune in my head-what a joy. We were tootling around with the old swing tune L-O-V-E in G the other day and I could play it different each of the 3 times it came around to me, the more I learn the neck, the more I find different combinations,it's limitless.
I've also learned to read notation and that has its advantages, and then once the tune is fixed #in the old memory-lookout!

[250sc]

That's the goal isn't it. Hear something in your head and it comes out of the instrument your playing. (singers do it all their lives)

[Santiago]

I play mandolin that way because I learned music on a violin (same tuning of fifths). On guitar, I don't enjoy the same dexterity, I think in part because the strings are not tuned in fifths or even consistent fourths.

[Jonmiller]

250SG,
It's the goal but not always the case, I've played with many musicians who can play the melody or what was memorized from a recording or from music, or cannot play at all without the music in front of them.
Singers don't have to think of fingering patterns or fretboards or where to land when the chord changes though it requires it's own skill.

[Jim MacDaniel]

I like the fact that any fret on the mandolin can be overlaid without translation onto four steps of the circle of fifths, and vice versa. (I think it would hurt my brain to have to translate it to some odd tuning like the guitar.)

[UnityGain]

I like to say that I've only actually learned one song, and I dont really know how to play mandoling but I'm getting better and better at making up... Seems to be going well so far...

[mandroid]

Whistling a tune seems to be my first 'instrument' ,
reviewed as being rather annoying to others
so it seems the mandolin is a little less annoying
as it includes keeping my mouth shut. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

[Oliver R]

I learn to whistle tunes in the correct key.
Once I can do that the tune is in my head.
I can then transfer it onto the mandolin (sometimes).. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Stephanie Reiser]

I've been playing mandolin for 5 years, but the guitar for 40. If I am working out a song in my mind, I think in terms of guitar chords then rethink it on the mandolin. I do not think mandonese yet, but am getting closer.

[Clyde Clevenger]

Think? Yer spose to think? I may have to start over.

[250sc]

jonmiller,

Your teachers served you well. If you can wing it and play what you think you are able to create your own music and play with others in any situation.

I think they taught you to think music and it won't matter what instrument you have in your lap. Can it be that you "think" music and not mandolin?

I've met those people who "can play the melody or what was memorized from a recording or from music, or cannot play at all without the music in front of them" too.

Each of us have different goals from our interest in music and some will never get past that stage and still get gratification from playing music. Others will use the memorized melody as a stepping stone to the goal of being able to play anything they think of.

No matter how you approach it, playing music can enrich your life.

[TomTyrrell]

I don't really "think" mandolin but the notes on the mandolin are where I "think" they should be. I can play the mandolin without even knowing what key I'm playing in, just as if it were my voice. When I'm doing theory stuff I have to use a different instrument, it is so obvious to me on the mandolin that I have trouble letting that extra layer between my brain and my instrument.

[farmerjones]

Sure, that's what it's all about. #So why do i gravitate towards notey fiddle tunes i can't play? I look at them like musical/mental puzzles.
Some days a get the feeling i can only play what my joints will let me, as well.

[250sc]

Farmerjones,

I first got interested in fiddle tunes because I don't like playing scales. I find that fiddle tunes, at their most static (no improvising) are a much more musical way of keeping your fingers nimble than scales. When I find tricky passages I make them into drills or exercises.

As long as you're wiggling your fingers, it all helps you become a better musician.

[bgjunkie]

Sometimes my problem is that I think too much.

When I watch movies or TV by myself I tend to do it with my mandolin in hand and often play along with whatever music is being played. #Last night I stopped on Fabulous Baker Boys and found myself picking along to Michele Phiefer's singing. #It was amazing how my fingers just seemed to find the right notes without thinking.

When I play in a jam I tend to think too hard about what I am playing and crash and burn.

[James P]

More and more I catch myself thinking in notation. I think this is helping me swap between instruments, but it doesn't seem to be helping me play any of them better.

[Jack Roberts]

What a great question! #"Thinking mandolin" is a great way to describe the ability to play mandolin by ear. #If that is your goal, may I suggest one possible path to reach it.

#My disclaimer is I am not a musician, I am a chemist. #I took up music at the ripe old age of 48. #But although technically I cannot play speedily or with virtuosity, I can "think" mandolin. #Enough so that my jamming buddies are always pleased with how quickly I can pick up a new tune they want to try.

#Without the benefit of a mandolin teacher, I did not take a planned route to acheive this, but I have achieved Harold Hill's Think Method by a combination of learning to read musical notation and learning to play fiddle (with a teacher) as well.
#
I am a very poor fiddle player, but I am light years advanced in mandolin Think Method because of the fiddle. #As Oliver R and Mandroid point out, whistling a tune (think Minuet in G) is the first step to thinking a tune, and then playing it without music or tab. #Someone once said if you can whislte, you can play fiddle.

Knowing to play from notation helps because it separates the sound of the music from where your fingers are supposed to go. After a while, your fingers go to the note your brain thinks just like your lips go to the note when you whislte. Tab, on the other hand, as useful as it is, is a direct finger to fret method with no sound indicated.

Actually, "think" is not the right word, because the goal is to get to the note without thinking about it, isn't it. My son, a Karate teacher, can move his body faster than natural reflexes seem possible, but he says his muscles have their own memory and think for themselves. This probably isn't neuralogically correct, but it is descriptive of the result, and what can happen with mandolin as well.

My only regret is my aged fingers are too creaky to go very fast, but I can play slower pieces well enough using the think method.

[Stephen Lind]

having been a guitar player for fifty years and very recently starting to play Mandolin
i'm finding playing and thinking/hearing Mandolineze intriguing
the tuned in 5th's thing makes much more sense than the guitar's standard tuning which i use most of the time

the more i play, the easier it gets
but some times i get a little confused

this place is a huge blessing
i've learned a ton here

Thank You

[250sc]

Does anyone have any opinions about if you can think music, the instrument doesn't matter much.

Through the years since I started playing music I've played everything from pedal steel to alto sax. When I played keyboards I had to learn lots of horn and string parts on synth and it made me stretch my musical knowledge. It's been my observation that the mental part of "hearing" music in your mind can be applied to any instrument. If you get the mental part, the rest falls into place much quicker.

BTW. I don't think notes (A, B, C) I mentally "hear" sounds.

[Jim]

It's all I do. Well not quite all but my brain knows the sound it wants to make and I just hunt around trying to make it come out. I play Guitar and Flute as well as Mandolin and think in sounds 'not note names. However, practicing scales, and chords on my stringed instruments, as well as reading about music theory as made finding those sounds much easier.I really don't change much about how I think musically when i change instruments, they all feel different enough that my fingers more or less know where to go for the appropriat sound. Wish my fingers were faster though.

[Jim Broyles]

I'd say I'm pretty much in agreement with 250 on this one with a caveat. I think music whether I am playing mandolin, which I do basically at a jam which is fairly high level in quality of pickers and singers; guitar, which I do at church for Sunday morning services (either electric or acoustic); or bass guitar, which I do the same as guitar. The caveat is that I try to think like a mandolin player would think music when I'm playing mando - using the techniques and execution that a mandolin player would use. Same thing with the other instruments - especially bass guitar. I have to think differently for electric guitar than I do for acoustic and I find I have to think like a bass player to remember to do the cool fill stuff and little things that #bass players do. #If I have a "main" instrument, it is electric guitar, in that I have played it long enough to be the most proficient on it of all #my instruments, but I really want it to be mandolin. When I say I try to think music, I mean that I want whatever I play to add to the song. The song is the important thing, not the player. I can do the coolest lick you ever heard, but if it doesn't fit with the song, it sounds bad. When I am practicing of playing for myself, I compose a lot of songs and and melodies on mandolin or acoustic guitar, and there I would say that I am just thinking music, and letting the notes come out my fingers.

[Lou Scuderi]

I play a lot of instruments, but oddly enough, I only ever "think" in two instruments. I started out on the cello, but soon migrated to mandolin, and now the mando is the only instrument in my head when I'm playing a string instrument. But a few years back I started playing the bagpipes, which were so different, I had to develop an entirely different thought process about playing music. Anybody experienced that?

[Tim Bowen]

While I think that "knowing music" can certainly provide a leg up when switching between various instruments, executing musical passages on them, especially in the heat of the moment at a public performance, in an improvisational sense, can be a different thing entirely; in this regard, when I'm playing an instrument that's less familiar to me, "knowing music" basically means that my ear will bail out my fingers when things start to get hairy.

I do feel that certain unavoidable guidelines, approaches, and visualizations are determined by one's earliest instrument of choice. In recent weeks, I've played mandolin, lap steel, and banjo at sessions and gigs, all of which are instruments that I've taken to over the last couple of years. During this time, guitar and bass were also played, and as these are instruments I've played since the mid-to-late 1960's, there's a certain comfort zone there that will always be more fully realized than anything else I pursue, simply because of dues paid.

I don't really have trouble "thinking" mandolin, as I like the way the instrument lays out in 5ths, but it is nonetheless thinking in a different way than how I brought myself up. For instance, I don't have big enough hands to lay out 'simple' (at least on guitar) "Stairway to Heaven" arpeggios; those grips would break my fingers on a mando, so re-thinking and re-voicing becomes the order of the day.

For me, lap steel is mostly about ear, intonation, and sustain. Other than for the right hand considerations (and traditional thumb and finger picks), I'll admit than when I play banjo, I'm mostly thinking/seeing 'guitar' with a drop D on top, no A string, and a G drone string.

I also play harmonica and percussion, which are, again, different beasts. I have a piano and an ancient analog synth at the house, which I mostly use for arrangement tools, as keys are not something I want to deal with in the live environment anymore. However, nothing makes better sense than a piano, if your core thinking process leans toward the linear side.

[F5G WIZ]

I like the fact that any fret on the mandolin can be overlaid without translation onto four steps of the circle of fifths, and vice versa.
Now that's just a bunch of fancy talk right there! #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
I do better jamming than actually playing straight tunes. #I can pretty much jam to any tune in any key but don't play a lot of memorized songs. #Is that weird? I have set down and learned some old Monroe stuff note for note like Raw Hide, Kentucky Waltz and some others. #I have seen some pickers who know only certain tunes and if someone plays something different they are totaly lost. #The same with reading music, my daughters are both learning to read and play by ear. #Some people can't play a lick without the music right in front of them.

[JeffD]

Mandolin is so refreshing, now that I am getting a grasp of the fingerboard, scales and chords and if I know the tune in my head-what a joy.

then once the tune is fixed #in the old memory-lookout!
Your enthusiasm is infectious!

You bring up a couple of things I think are valuable.

Knowing your way around the fretboard - which I believe is much easier on an instrument tuned in regular intervals, and especially in fifths.

And learning (memorizing) some tunes. Having an aviary of tunes you can move up and down and round the fretboard.

[JeffD]

I like the fact that any fret on the mandolin can be overlaid without translation onto four steps of the circle of fifths, and vice versa.
Now that's just a bunch of fancy talk right there! #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Its so true. Because the fretboard is so regularly layed out, I can see every note in its relationship to the circle of fifths. You don't move from note to note as much as you move from family to family.

[Jack Roberts]

Does anyone have any opinions about if you can think music, the instrument doesn't matter much.


BTW. I don't think notes (A, B, C) I mentally "hear" sounds.
I "think" this is correct. Once one knows one's way around the sounds of an instrument, one can hear the tune in the mind and play it on the instrument. I suppose it is easier on the mandolin because it is easy to play any note in any key, sharp or flat, on the mandolin: everything is in ready reach of the four fingers. Before I started Mandolin I tried to teach myself clarinet, and I could only use the "Think Method" for two keys.

I also don't think notes, or even intervals, but my wife, a singer, most certainly does. She does both do-re-me-fa (intervals) and she can tell at any time what note she is singing. She has no desire to play any instrument (other than piano on occasion) because her voice doesn't cost anything and she can take it with her anywhere she goes. She enjoys the advantages of an excellent musical education. And when she sings with our group, we might as well not be there, as she gets all the audience appreciation. (I'm not jealous, just proud.)

[Ivan Kelsall]

I've been playing Mandolin now for just over 2 1/2 years,but i've been listening to it for over 40 years & i have the sound of it 'in my head'. I'm just learning how to get it out onto my instrument & i find that i CAN think Mandolin the same way that i can 'think' Banjo
after 45 years of playing.Each new thing i learn is just a stepping stone to the next thing
& it's the most exciting thing i've done in years. To quote Chris Thile from the 'Bluegrass Journey' DVD, "Mandolins are awsome !",
Saska