Just a thought

[raycan2]

Till I get my Mandolin, is it possible to take a guitar and string it upside down with only 4 strings and practice learning mandolin chords on a guitar...

[JeffD]

If I understand correctly, you would get the right chord shapes but not the individual melody notes.

Before I owned a mandolin I borrowed my dad's tenor banjo, tuned in fifths, and worked with that and a beginners clarinet book I had from seventh grade summer band, and taught myself where the notes were. Good memory.

[raycan2]

Well I have time right now that iam in a sling due to shoulder surgery, but I was just thinking about that as I was looking at one of my guitars....

[jmkatcher]

I started guitar using inverted mandolin chord shapes on a subset of strings - at least when I needed a guitar chord I didn't know.

[Baron Collins-Hill]

A better option might be to do this on the middle four nut/bridge slots, from low pitch to high pitch

A string tuned down to G
D string tuned to D
B string tuned down to A
high E string tuned to E

xGDAEx (x = empty nut slot)

That way everything is in the right pitch relationship. I hope this helps!
Thanks,
Baron

[gtani7]

Don't know about upside down (electric would be ok) but Fripp's tuning had stringsets and books and everything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_standard_tuning

[Willie Poole]

Also you could capo way up the neck so that the distance from the capo to the bridge will be about the same as a mandolin neck, "17 inches"... tune the middle strings like suggested above and you might get a better feel for "mandolin chords"....