View Full Version : Who Only Plays Mandolin and No Other Instrument
Rick Schmidlin
Nov-28-2009, 4:06pm
Who does?
Glassweb
Nov-28-2009, 4:14pm
moi!
majorbanjo
Nov-28-2009, 4:28pm
Man....don't see how anyone can only play one stringed instrument.....once it get's in your blood I watch the fiddle, guitar and banjo player like a hawk.....I hear a fancy lick and I've got to try it.......there's no way I could only play one instrument....
jasona
Nov-28-2009, 5:27pm
Me.
If you can call what I do on the mandolin "playing".
JEStanek
Nov-28-2009, 5:32pm
Not me. Mandolin, OM, some concert uke, and I hope to add a mandola to the mix.
Jamie
Glassweb
Nov-28-2009, 6:04pm
moi!
ok... truth be told i also play mandola. and once upon a time i messed with people's minds on the steel drums, but that was then...
ColdBeerGoCubs
Nov-28-2009, 6:25pm
Me.
If you can call what I do on the mandolin "playing".
+1.
Philphool
Nov-28-2009, 8:05pm
Well, it's the only instrument that I'd consider playing in public except for strumming a rhythm guitar along with someone else really playing.:)
Mark Gibbs
Nov-28-2009, 8:24pm
I am a mandolin player. I can play other instruments but i don't.
Can't wait to get my new mando with the quilted maple back and sides. The A-style Waverly's with ebony knobs arrived Saturday. Wyatt says the satin finish is amazing and the works are extremely smooth. The body is together and now he will finish the neck. Won't be long.
For this winter I'm having him build an arch top octave mandolin. I've never played one but i like the sound. Once again I hope my wife doesn't read this.
If anyone one wants to see what the mandos that he is making for me look like, bring up my previous posts.
Mark
fishtownmike
Nov-28-2009, 8:36pm
I play quite a few instruments but have been keying on the mandolin for quite a while now. Hand problems make playing the others difficult and painfull and the smaller mando neck makes it an easier instrument for me to play...Mike
Daniel Nestlerode
Nov-28-2009, 10:14pm
I started out on guitar. Hard to give it up, mostly because mandolin improves my guitar playing.
Oh well. :)
Daniel
Dave Greenspoon
Nov-28-2009, 11:07pm
+1.
+2.
Ivan Kelsall
Nov-29-2009, 3:02am
Almost ! - My Guitar & Banjo have taken such a back seat these last 4 years,it's like they weren't there,
Ivan
Tim Bowen
Nov-29-2009, 3:54am
At this point, I couldn't imagine. Since 1967, guitar has been my instrument of choice, and for many of those years (including the present time), my primary means of financial support. However, the thought of not playing bass, mandolin, jaw harp, keyboard, banjo, lap steel, shaker, kazoo, tambourine, tuned percussion, harmonica, or whatever instrument I deem necessary for the tune at hand - is as foreign to me as is the notion of being reincarnated as a stink bug.
Much to my chagrin, I've long had a saying:
"Most guitarists aren't into music, they're into guitar playing. Not necessarily the same thing by default".
For what it's worth, I've always been way more into music than I have been fond of particular instruments.
Mike Snyder
Nov-29-2009, 4:13am
Beware the wrath of the stink bug!
I pick tenor banjo on occasion, although most folks wish I wouldn't.
FrDNicholas
Nov-29-2009, 3:14pm
I backslide occaisonally to guitar, but I seem to always want to return to the mandolin. I've tinkered with concertina and mandola and, at one point, hammered dulcimer, but nothing seems to be as satifying as the mandolin.
I am a mandolin player. I can play other instruments but i don't.
There it is.
Actually - I would not consider that I play other instruments, I play at them. The fiddle, the tenor guitar, I am not ready for playing in public.
I do play mandola, but its just a big mandolin. Is that really, in the spirit of the OP's question, another instrument??
Notice, however, everything I play, or play at, is tuned in fifths.
walt33
Nov-29-2009, 3:34pm
. . . mandolin improves my guitar playing.
+1 on that!
Much to my chagrin, I've long had a saying:
"Most guitarists aren't into music, they're into guitar playing. Not necessarily the same thing by default".
Words to live by. Every time I get frustrated on guitar, mando, or any other instrument, I struggle to remind myself of this.
+eleventy.
Matt DeBlass
Nov-29-2009, 9:00pm
I like to say that I can play any instrument, just some of them really, really badly. :grin:
Marcus CA
Nov-29-2009, 9:15pm
'I've played on the music strings all of my life.
Their silver-thread melodies take me away.
My lifelines to cling to in stillness and strife,
Weaving my passage through starlight and day."
--- Mary McCaslin
As much as I love the mandolin and its entire family, I couldn't play only one instrument any more than I could drink only one type of beverage. Each instrument has its own special flavor and hits me in its own special way.
Keith Erickson
Nov-29-2009, 9:40pm
Years ago I was a "one instrument" type of guy but now it's nearly 2010 and my primary instruments are the mandolin and the mandocello. However I do round this out by also playing the mountain dulcimer and the guitar.
As you can see, I've come along way from covering Def Leppard tunes on the hurdy gurdy ;)
Richard Watts
Dec-05-2009, 8:56am
a mandolin is all i can play my hands are small and i had trouble even playing a mandolin till i met mr hutto he fixed me one to fit my hand and not give up anything very intelligent luthier:mandosmiley:
As much as I love the mandolin and its entire family, I couldn't play only one instrument any more than I could drink only one type of beverage. Each instrument has its own special flavor and hits me in its own special way.
I find that the mandolin is constantly becoming a new instrument for me. I pass one hurdle and move on to the next and the mandolin becomes unfamiliar territory once again.
When I first figured out DUDU, when one day my tremolo became smooth, when I first started to play up the neck, when I started to really dig into Bach, when I first started to seriously get into double stops, when I started to get a handle on what Bill Monroe was up to, etc., etc., after climbing each mountain I found another mountain in front of me.
If I had been seriously distracted by another instrument I would never have found all the things my mandolin is. I will not live long enough to put that kind of time into any other instrument.