Hi everyone, I got my mando, I'm having a bash, but I'm not too sure I'm doing things right.
I read through heaps of posts here and have carried as much across into playing as I can. What I am doing is picking out notes with a plectrum, from a fiddle book. A bit more detail:
Left hand:
I'm coming at the fingerboard more like it was a fiddle than a guitar, with the fingers pointing more up the fingerboard than across it. I am making no attempt to keep the line of knuckles parallel to the neck, in fact, I am deliberately putting them on an angle, and resting the neck in the V of the thumb and first finger.
I am playing only dead simple tunes, and the way they are, I am only using frets 2, 4 and 5 and open strings, so I am sticking to the rule and fretting them with first, second and third fingers.
Right hand:
I have a pick held in between the thumb and the knuckle nearest the nail on my first finger, the other fingers loosely curled up.
My forearm, near the elbow, rests on the edge of the body of the mando, not in a harsh way, but it does touch. I am trying to have a floating arm going right from the start.
I try to hold the pick at right angles to the strings at all times, as this seems to help cleanly hit both strings of a course as I pick. I am picking notes for now, not learning chords and strumming, just yet.
I'm trying to do down/up but I'm not being strict about it - if I have quarter notes I will just as likely do down/down and only alternate with eighth notes. So what about cross string picking(?), I presume that really strict down/up is not the go there because sometimes it would not make sense to be strict?
Anyway, that's what I'm doing, two days in as a mando player. All this stuff I learned from this board, but from many many threads. How's the plan? Is it going to work?
Bookmarks