"Unorthodox" mando players

[mandocrucian]

1) Reverse stringing: #This will almost invariably be left handed players who have simply flipped a RH instrument to the other side without restringing.

The only guy I can think of is British folk-rocker Steve Ashley (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:vsjw7i6jg78r~T1) who plays guitar and OM that way.

2) alternate RH approaches: Wayne Henderson plays guitar and mandolin "Reno style", using thumbpick and index fingerpick to playing single line style.

John McEuen (http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:rm59ke9t7q70~T1) (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) plays mando with thumb and fingerpicks 3-finger banjo style. #Ralph Stanley occasionally played mando, using banjo rolls.

Blind old-time mando player Kenny Hall used his index finger like a flatpick (down-up), which is the way sitar is played.

Radim Zenkl has his thumbpick and pipa-style finger flatpicks.

3) missing fret hand fingers, etc: There's the banjo player in IIIrd Tyme Out who plays overhanded with a deformed LH, but are there any mando/OM players who fit into this category?

Those are a few starting points; there are probably a couple other categories (overhanded, fingerpicking exclusively). #

NH

[AlanN]

quote...There's the banjo player in IIIrd Tyme Out who plays overhanded with a deformed LH,

His name is Barry Abernathy and he's long gone from 3TO, now with Mountain Heart. He kills it.

I picked with a guy from Manteo, NC who had one finger (index) on his fretting hand. Did a good job, kept asking me to pick Rawhide, but he really meant Train 45 http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

[MDW]

Dave Brubeck who had an accident that left his right hand impaired forcing him to create a much more chordal style of jazz piano.

And if we're including deceased players, how about Django Reinhardt who had his fretting hand severely damaged in a fire, leaving him only 2 usable fretting fingers.

Opps, just realized we were talking about mando players.

[Brian Baker]

Christian contemporary artist Michael Card, a leftie, plays a RH guitar, just rotated (so the strings are reversed)... And pretty darn well I might add.

But I don't know of any mando players who do...

Brian

[jesse5300]

-1) Reverse stringing: This will almost invariably be left handed players who have simply flipped a RH instrument to the other side without restringing.

I know a man that could play a banjo this way. it was really wierd. im not sure if he plays anymore

[bratsche]

Christian contemporary artist Michael Card, a leftie, plays a RH guitar, just rotated (so the strings are reversed)... #And pretty darn well I might add.

But I don't know of any mando players who do...


Michael Card plays mandola, too. ;-) I played in a backup string ensemble for one of his South Florida concerts a number of years back. It was before I got into mandos myself, but I realized in retrospect that that's what it was. I noticed it was an eight stringer, but too big to be a mandolin. Flat top, I believe. At that point in my life (maybe 12 years ago?) the word "mandola" was not yet in my vocabulary. Had I known they existed, I would have realized what he was playing. ;-) I like Michael's style of music. He's one of the very few contemporary Christian performers I find easy to listen to, really.

bratsche

[swampstomper]

If we're including dead artists -- John Duffy played mandolin with three-finger banjo picks on some early Gents experiments. I think one was Dixie Lookaway, reissued on on the High Lonesome 2-CD set.

[mandroid]

I made a yardsale mando work and resold it to a guitar player friend, he restrung it LH and then played it RH because it was in 4ths like the guitar and , just fine , though ascending scales decended in pitch.
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif

[AlanN]

The late, great bop guitarist Tal Farlow started out on the mandolin in Greensboro, NC. He tuned it like a uke.

[Hans]

Kenny's unusual method of pickin'. His thumb is almost always planted on the G course unless he picks it.

[AlanN]

Thanks for the pic of Kenny. Haven't seen him since Tucson in the 70's , looks good.

[Jim Gallaher]

Eddie King, the mandolin player for Phoenix (www.phoenixbluegrass.com (http://www.phoenixbluegrass.com)), flips his mando to play it left-handed but strung normally.

[Hans]

I was dumbstruck to have bumped into Kenny giving a little workshop at Grass Valley this year. My wife and I sat transfixed for 2 hours listening to him and his wife sing, play and tell stories. He's 81 and still going strong. It's just amazing the number of tunes he knows.

[AlanN]

Kenny ain't no nail biter, that's for sure!

[csstanley]

MArk Templeton has a fella that plays bass and sometimes mando that flips the mando upside down to play left handed. E string up top with G on bottom.

Saw them last weekend at a local Festival.

[SternART]

Even Marshall uses some unusual right hand technique, he gets a sound similar to Radim...... when Radim uses the 2 picks at once.

[glauber]

Those are a few starting points; there are probably a couple other categories (overhanded, fingerpicking exclusively).
I nominate myself, in the under-talented category.

[bsimmers]

There is a mandolin picker from Mount Jackson VA who is very good. He has just 2 fingers on his left hand. He can play just about any tune very well, including "Scotland" (with the pull-offs).

Also, after seeing Sam Bush this summer in Lancaster, I'm convinced Sam could play any mandolin with any combination of picks, slides, bars, strings, fingers, or hands.

[Keith Erickson]

Christian contemporary artist Michael Card, a leftie, plays a RH guitar, just rotated (so the strings are reversed)... #And pretty darn well I might add.

But I don't know of any mando players who do...

Brian
About 15 years ago, I was part of a New Years Eve Party/ Jam session that went all night long.

About 2:30 am we decided to play some material off "Rust in Peace" and "Symphony of Destruction" from Megadeathhttp://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif

An aquaintance/ guitar player that I knew was there and joined in. #The guy was left-handed and played his guitar upside down. #To this day, I believe he was one of the best guitar players that I have have ever heard.

I asked why he played the guitar upside down. He told me that when he was 7 years old he didn't know any better when he was teaching himself how to play. #He thought that all of the chord books just had it all wrong. # http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

[Coy Wylie]

There's a fine older fiddler here on the High Plains that is missing the ring and middle finger on his left hand. He plays lots of stage shows and gives lessons. I hear he plays mando as well and gives lessons too. I've jammed with him many times but not seen him play a mando yet.

[John Rosett]

i used to have a bluegrass unlimited magazine from the 70's that had an article about a one armed man (missing his left) that played fiddle and banjo. for fiddle, he held the bow between his knees and sawed the fiddle up and down. for banjo, he had a wire "arm" with a wooden dowel. he laid the banjo in his lap, and fretted with the dowel. i can't remember his name or any other info.

[Stephanie Reiser]

There is a mandolin player with that really young group called Nickel-something, maybe it is Nickel Creek. Anyway, his name is Chris-something or other, and he is left-handed, but plays rightie. Does a pretty good job, I'm told.

[glauber]

There is a mandolin player with that really young group called Nickel-something, maybe it is Nickel Creek. Anyway, his name is Chris-something or other, and he is left-handed, but plays rightie. Does a pretty good job, I'm told.
Really bad posture too, i hear. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[John Flynn]

My instructor, Curtis Buckhannon, is always making jokes and doing gags when he performs, it's just part of his personal style. He does a gag that I am sure others before him have done many times. It is more of a sight gag than unorthodox playing. For instance, let's say the tune ends on G note, backed by a G chord, so a double stop G and B would sound good on the last beat. He will play that last beat as a double stop Gb and Bb. Then he will put his hand on the tail of the mandolin and push the mando to the left, holding his left steady on the double stop. The neck will, of course, move left under his fingers, moving up to G and B. It's corny, I know, but with the right timing and facial expression, it usually gets a laugh.

[mandocrucian]

Since other instruments are being mentioned.....

Left-handers playing RH instrument without restringing:
Albert King - blues guitarist

Bobby Sloane - fiddler (Ky Colonels, JD Crowe & New South, etc)


Guitar played on lap, overhanded (ala Appalachian duclimer):
Thumbs Carlisle

Jeff Healy


Two-handed tappers:
Eddie Van Halen, Jennifer Batten, Stanley Jordan, Steve Vai etc. etc.

Emmett Champman and anyone who plays the "Chapman Stick"

related to the above, when playing both necks simultaneously -Hinged doubleneck guitars (RH neck and LH on same body):
John Otway, Steve Vai, Michael Angelo Battio....


Missing Digits:
Jerry Garcia (missing part of RH middle finger, not really a major impediment, just means he uses ring finger when playing banjo)

Jon Mark (guitarist, ex-John Mayall, Marc-Almond. Tore off a fret hand finger falling out of a tree as an already established recording artist)

Tommy Iomi (guitar - Black Sabbath). #Missing part of a LH finger, plays with an artificial extension.

Django Reinhardt - of course! #(actually, it isn't nearly as difficult to play with only two fingers as most people assume*. Develops stretch fingering and shifting ability while actually simplifying LH fingering options (open, index or middle. The Django-restriction-exercises are part of the Mandocrucian exercise program for mind & hand.)


Multiple instruments at one time:
Rhassan Roland Kirk (saxes, flutes) - could play two or three saxes simultaneously


<span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%'>But what about the "mando players"?</span>

Niles H

<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>(*I got kicked on the tip of my LH ring finger during my blue belt test. Probably had a hairline fracture, any fretting with it was pure stabbing pain. Had to play the next few weeks of gigs Django-style. That wasn't really a problem, if all I was doing was playing mandolin, but reconfiguring the alternate fingering on the fly while simultaneously playing organ bass pedals and percussion with my feet was really pushing my multi-tasking limits. Had no choice but to dumb down the mandolin playing, otherwise I'd lose it on the bass. One job, my wife had laryngitus, so I also had to sing most of the tunes that day.)</span>

[B. T. Walker]

"(*I got kicked on the tip of my LH ring finger during my blue belt test. Probably had a hairline fracture, any fretting with it was pure stabbing pain. Had to play the next few weeks of gigs Django-style. That wasn't really a problem, if all I was doing was playing mandolin, but reconfiguring the alternate fingering on the fly while simultaneously playing organ bass pedals and percussion with my feet was really pushing my multi-tasking limits. Had no choice but to dumb down the mandolin playing, otherwise I'd lose it on the bass. One job, my wife had laryngitus, so I also had to sing most of the tunes that day.)"

Jeez, Niles, your corpus callosum must have been sizzling. Did you fry an egg on the top of your head? http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[evanreilly]

Once I saw John Hartford play mandolin using thumb and finger picks.

[Jim Yates]

A couple of Canadian mandolin players:
I've seen David Essig play blues mandolin with two national fingerpicks and a plastic thumbpick.
The late Duck Donald, who used to play with Cathy Fink, played with A-style mandolins and banjo-mandolins strung left handed but he also had a left-handed F style mandolin, strung left-handed.

[mandobando]

Tim Stafford has that crazy right hand when he plays guitar but it works.

[otterly2k]

Sorry, not mando,
but Elizabeth (Libba) Cotten (remember the song Freight Train?) played guitar left handed but not restrung... so the treble was on the thumb.

[mad dawg]

Radim has also experimented with using the eraser end of pencils for sort of a hammered dulcimer effect.

[Hans]

For those of you that are interested in Kenny Hall's music, someone has built him a website at:

www.kennyhallband.com

His old albums are being remade into CD's, and they have just #come out with the Sweetsmill 1 & 2. They are also doing a documentary on him. If you like old time string band music, Kenny is tops.

[bluesmandolinman]

well "Unorthodox" is a wide range...

I would ad :

Yank Rachell - uses mainly Upstrokes instead of downstrokes
Ry Cooder - fingerpicking
Players that use Octave Tuning like Charlie McCoy
Sam Bush - slide

René

[Andrew Reckhart]

Most people who've ever heard me play would definately call it "unorthodox". I prefer to think of it as I suck!http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[rnjl]

Well, if the topic is "UnOrthodox," then for sure we're NOT talking about Andy Statman or Fishel Bresler.

[RolandTumble]

Yet another Radim Zenkl oddity: He put out one disc (Galactic Mandolin) with twelve different alternate tunings. One each track, one string of each pair was tuned normally, the other to a different interval from its mate. So:

gg #dd #aa #ee
gg# dd# aa# ef (e#)
ga #de #ab #ef#

Etc., up to octaves.

Some of the pieces are pretty cool, some are just out there....

[mandroid]

Ken Kesey got the use of Mac Court, in Eugene, for a show of music and poetry performance, mr. Kirk had suffered a stroke, still did the gig, and was playing the heck out of his sax with only his left arms fingering functional.
music in both hemispheres..