I feel understood.Originally Posted by (JeffD @ May 27 2008, 15:40)
Now that you mention it - it never occurred to me to count guitar players' fingers, I think I'm on to something...
Bertram
I feel understood.Originally Posted by (JeffD @ May 27 2008, 15:40)
Now that you mention it - it never occurred to me to count guitar players' fingers, I think I'm on to something...
Bertram
the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world
More accurately, we use the frets only as "stops" and shouldn't actually bend the string around the fret wire.Originally Posted by (JeffD @ May 23 2008, 11:32)
The reason fiddles are so much faster is use of the bow which facilitates speed.
I come to the mandolin by a very different path: Saxophone, Clarinet, flute, guitar, harmonica, Cajun Button accordion, Mandolin. The transition from harmonica to Cajun button accordion was rather easy, the in-out diatonic form is almost identical. I feel the rythmn and timing required for the button keyboard somehow has translated well into the mandolin. Plus I had always found the guitar to be hard until I discovered open tunings. Open D was a revelation and made playing much easier. I think the mandolin is easier to play than a standard tuned guitar. Chords are simpler (still hard to squeeze my fingers in for an A though) and you can get every bit as many "sounds" out of it. The accordion is still my favorite, but the mandolin it catching up fast.
Capt. E
Jammin' south of the river
'20 Gibson A-2
Stromberg-Voisinet Tenor Guitar
Penny Whistle
My albums: http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/album.php?u=7616
Yes? We probably all do.. . But, hey...you can do it really fast.Originally Posted by (Klaus Wutscher @ May 27 2008, 07:45)
I read every post, except; I did not finish the post about the guy who said the lap steel guitar is his new squeese. No offense. It was great, too, I forgot what the topic was. All the details have been pawed out it seems, but I have one question: How many on this thread work with the FFcP as written by JazzMando.com, and how many work from another book? Just trying to find the common groundwork for agreeing with so many on this thread.
Without Love in the Dream it will never come true.
Well, not quite. That's why the guitar is still worth playing; if the mando could do everything the guitar can, there wouldn't be many people struggling with 5, 6 and more-note polyphony on the guitar.Originally Posted by (Capt. E @ May 27 2008, 12:28)
Good topic.
Guitar now seems clumsy and illogical. I think it's just tuned that way to make pentatonic scales easy to remember.
Trying to learn fiddle. It should be easy, 'cause it's tuned the same, right? There's only two difficult things about playing fiddle- the intonation and the bowing!
"Four fingers, six strings, you are out gunned from the start."
Piano. 88 keys, 10 fingers. You are machine-gunned from the start.
More seriously: For me this far, the wierdest and most illogical instrument I have been trying to learn, is the charango. Five double strings, re-entrant tuning like ukulele, but more complicated. Donīt get me wrong, I love the little beast and its sound, but playing the thing drives me nuts, mostly. My problem probably is that Iīm not "at home" with understanding music as chords - I play on mandolin the melody as I hear it or read it, or on piano the music as I read it.
But still - when I started experimenting with an ukulele (sort of stripped-down charango? sorry), I thought the re-entrant tuning would make the chords easy to play, even if not so logical. Unfortunately this was not my experience. It still doesnīt make sense to me...
Well, at least you don't have to press them all down at the same timeOriginally Posted by (Arto @ May 28 2008, 15:36)
My father played the piano, but I could never come to terms with it for a different reason shown in this calculation:
2 arms, 2 different things to play at a time, 1 male brain - outgunned again.
Seems there are a lot of instruments out there invented by aliens with different numbers of body parts. I think I'm on to something...
Bertram
the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world
Doesn't four courses 22 frets make more sense than 88 strings, one "fret" each.Originally Posted by (Arto @ May 28 2008, 09:36)
The mandolin is looking better all the time
Bertram, don't try pedal steel: both hands, both feet, and KNEES too--it's like eating a salad and talking on the cellphone while driving a car.
Mandolin does make more sense to me than a guitar fingerboard. But speed on the mandolin seems to elude me. Just as I thought I was getting somewhere, I got old and can't move as lithely as I ustacould!
I can pretty much keep up speed-wise on the banjo with anyone, but musically, I have to know a piece pretty well on the banjo. No faking it.
Won't try it - promised!Originally Posted by (catmandu2 @ May 30 2008, 01:23)
Uilleann pipes is another example - both elbows for bellows and bag, both hands for the chanter, and one wrist for regulator switches.
On the other hand, that salad/cellphone thing doesn't seem so bad in comparison - sounds like a standard MacDonalds drive-in procedure.
Bertram
the world is better off without bad ideas, good ideas are better off without the world
But I know from experience that driving with the knees is much easier than learning pedal steel--at the drive thru, you don't have to focus on being "in tune."
Bookmarks