Fiddle players and mandolin.

[Br1ck]

I'm lucky enough to be vacationing with both my daughters, both pro string players, a violist and a cellist. I was playing my mandolin when I mentioned that it was tuned like a violin. My violist daughter picked up my mando and played a perfect Bach suite, plucking the mando with her fingers. Then the cellist did the same thing. Geez, I feel so inadequate. I mean the whole prelude to the suite. Perfectly.

No wonder fiddle players can play mandolin.

[Mark Miller]

That's awesome that they are so talented. Makes a daddy proud!

[CarlM]

One excellent fiddle player I know tried mandolin for a while and gave up on it. She said that she had difficulty with the picking.

[Steve Ostrander]

Sure, but can they play Rawhide?

[Mandobart]

I came to mando from a violin and guitar background. I was able to pick tunes on the mando the first time I picked one up. Unfortunately, you can't say the opposite - there are very few mando pickers that can pick up a violin for the first time and start playing music.

[John Kelly]

I totally agree with Mandobart on this, speaking from first-hand experience! I have found the fiddle the most frustrating instrument to take up, after decades of guitar and mandolin family. Lack of frets, new physical position for instrument, that unwieldy bow and its handling all cause me a lot of grief, but good fun too. One of our workshop tutors, who is a violinist rather than a fiddler, tried my mandolin recently and she struggled with the double courses and much higher string tension, not to mention the scale length (I use around 370mm on my mandolins). She commented that she now understood why I had a tendency to reach too far when fingering notes - it's all the years of muscle memory from my mandolin playing trying to make me retain the same spacing on the shorter fiddle scale length that i have absorbed on the mandolin. Nice to have a real excuse now for lousy playing!

[catmandu2]

... violin and guitar...

Yep. If a gtr and vn/fdl collaborated for offspring, its progeny would be a mandolin..

And furthering the conversing idea: starting with a 'smaller' instrument and then going to gtr is often much more challenging (where did my 5th-tuning go?! And what about these extra strings..?

[CWRoyds]

I came to mando from a violin and guitar background. I was able to pick tunes on the mando the first time I picked one up. Unfortunately, you can't say the opposite - there are very few mando pickers that can pick up a violin for the first time and start playing music.

Ain't that the truth.
I used to play violin, viola, and double bass in High School, but have not really played one in 25 years.
After I started really getting into the mandolin, I figured I should be able to transfer that stuff back to the fiddle.
I bought a couple of cheap old fiddles to mess around with.
I was mistaken in my expectations. LOL

I get the left hand perfectly, and can pick out mandolin tunes easily, although it is easiest when holding it like a mandolin.
The problem comes from the bowing.
Bowing is a very difficult thing.

It is fun to do though.
I will never be any good at fiddle, but it is cool to pick one up for a noodle.
I love the drone stuff you can do, and the near endless notes you can pull with the bow.
Double stops are awesome too.
I envy the good fiddle players, as it must be great fun to do what they do.

I have to say, I am a fan of the violin as an acoustic machine.
They are fascinating instruments in their construction and function.
I had a good time checking out the old fiddles I bought.
I learned how to fit bridges and mess with the sound posts, etc.
I recommend having a few crappy fiddles around.
You can experiment with them without worrying about messing anything up.
I do recommend not messing with the sound post if you don't have to.
They are an annoying thing to get in the right place, or even get it up in the first place.

[Mark Gunter]

Coming to mandolin from other stringed instruments -

As a guitarist, the day I got my first mandolin, I picked out a tune on it, got it under my fingers, walked across the street and practiced it with a neighbor on guitar, and played it with her at a jam that Saturday night. And now, I've spent two years trying to learn to actually play the mandolin, and still haven't gotten good at it. The mandolin is an easy instrument to understand as to the fingerboard, and easy enough to pick out a melody, but really tough to really make one sing, for me anyway. With a mediocre talent, two years produces less than mediocre results for me.

[Northwest Steve]

I can relate, my daughter who is 14 plays violin and fiddle. It is frustrating how quickly (but great) she pics things up. At this time she has little interest in the mandolin.

[catmandu2]

I have to say, I am a fan of the violin as an acoustic machine...

You, me, and a few centuries of Europeans..

[DavidKOS]

People with violin training have an easy time with the fingerings on mandolin.

However, they generally need to learn to use the pick. It's is not the same as using a bow!

[Stephen Perry]

Violins are actually easier. Big stick, hard to lose, gives lots of leverage and potential for tricks. None of those horrible frets to throw off intonation and get in the way. Kind of dinky, so they're easy to carry around. The pick is indeed a challenge!

[CES]

As a complete hack, real musicians tick me off, too

[MikeZito]

About 10 years ago I decided to give the violin a try, as another weapon in my musical arsenal . . . I figured that it would be an easy transition, since the fingering is the same as a mandolin.

WRONG!

I have no trouble with the fingerboard as long as the instrument is in a mandolin-playing position - but once I threw that thing up on my shoulder, I was completely lost.

VERY FRUSTRATING!

Oh well, you can't win them all . . . .

[Charlieshafer]

With the mandocello/cello I find an interesting thing. Guitar players can pick up the mandocello and figure out the pattern pretty quickly, and because they're used to picking, make some nice noises quickly. Most of the cello players pick up my mandocello and have a hard time with the string tension, the frets and the picking, so it becomes tough. Going from big to small, like the op mentioned with violas and cellos, the mandolin comes easier with the lighter tension. I started with the cello, and went to mandocello (with an electric mandolin just for occasional giggles and kicks) and find that I do better with the bow than the pick. I've been playing the mandocello now long enough that I should be equally proficient, but no. I wonder if it's just one of those "some get, some don't" sort of things.

[darrylicshon]

That's how I started, I started playing violin at 10 , and played in a classical orchestra for many years, at a party there was a mandolin hanging on the wall, I was told it was tuned like a violin, I played it all night and was hooked since

[catmandu2]

...I wonder if it's just one of those...things.

I wonder if this isn't a prevalent feeling among 'bowed-strings first' players. My experience - having spent my initial 2-3 decades playing bowed-strings, fingerstyle frets, and winds - is that flatpicking just doesn't hold as much interest for me. Picking is fun as heck, but I'm accustomed to the complexity and sonority involved in bowing & blowing, polyphony in fingerstyle approaches, et al.

Not slagging mandi - we all love em.

[Randi Gormley]

I remember when I was taking one of my first mandolin workshops at band camp (as it were), there were perhaps 3 youngsters (say, late teens) who were taking fiddle from one of the masters. there they were, sitting in our workshop with mandolins they'd just brought along. I remember at least one was a bowlback. And they had no problem picking up tunes on the mandolin. Those of us starting out just sighed and moved on. I will say I don't recall having that happen ever again, and I don't think any of those kids ever actually moved on to mandolin. It was my first taste of realizing I should not only have started mandolin back when I started flute (in elementary school) but I should have been more dedicated to music!

[bruce.b]

I always avoided the fiddle, thinking it would take too long to get good at it well along in life. Last September I traded a mandolin for a fiddle and loved it from the first sound I made. I actually found it easier than expected to get a good tone right away. It's pretty much taken over my life and I've barely played my two Herb Taylor archtop tenors that I love. I keep on thinking I'll get back to playing them, but so far it hasn't happened. Fiddle is mind bogglingly great.

[Stephen Perry]

See see!! Bruce gets it!!

But I can drink a beer and still make a mandolin work.

[Mark Wilson]

Fiddle is mind bogglingly great.

I don't dare pick it up for that reason

[Br1ck]

Perhaps I should get a fiddle just to further my life goal to suck at as many instruments as possible. So far: mandolin, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, electric bass, ukulele, lap steel, dobro, pedal steel, harmonica, so why not violin?

[dhergert]

Our band's fiddle player is also a classically trained violinist and pianist. And she also flatpicks guitar a little.

We gifted her one of the "$199.00 solid F style" Michael Kelly Legacy Festivals that were on sale a few months ago along with a detailed setup, a Gator styro-case and a strap, all for Christmas. She picked out wonderful music on it immediately. We were very pleased, as is she.

[F-2 Dave]

I started fiddle and mandolin about the same time in the seventies. Every time I learned a new tune, I learned it on two instruments instead of one. Years later I find myself playing mandolin a lot more. For several reasons. The least of which is no one ever asks the mandolin player to play orange blossom special.

Then, out of the blue, a local band called, well, texted that they needed a fiddle player for an upcoming dance. I was somewhat amused that someone wanted me to play fiddle, and quickly agreed to do the gig. It all went down (to borrow from the seventies vernacular) last night. It was a hoot. Now I can't decide if I'm a fiddle playing mandolinist or a mandolin playing fiddler.