Huge jump in mandola skills

[JeffD]

I had for the past little while put aside my mandolins and taken to playing on my new acquisition, a tenor guitar. I tune the thing CGDA. In learning to play tenor guitar, I took a lot of pointers from a tenor banjo friend of mine.

Well this afternoon, I picked up my mandola and it was like a new instrument in my hands. I have owned the thing for an embarrassing number of years, and now for the first time I really get it. I have broken free of my previously limited and limiting view of the mandola as a mandolin in F, or an octave mandolin needing a capo and missing a string set.

Of course it is still a mandolin family instrument, with its bright tremolo and all, but now I see the fretboard in a new way, and guess what - its a mandola in C.

I want to emphasize to points:

First - instruments tuned in fifths make SOooooOO much sense, why would anyone play anything else?

Second - I am having way way too much fun.

[Robert Moreau]

I agree with the tuned in 5ths comment. I played guitar for years and it was always a struggle to figure new stuff out. With the mandolin it seems to fall in place a lot more easily.

I've seen pictures of tenor guitars but I don't think I've heard one played solo before. Do you know of any sound clips of one out there? Sounds interesting.

[Bertram Henze]

I played tenor banjo after mandolin and before OM - and yes, it's a natural way to bridge the gap of approach. Which does not mean that the OM is just a banjo with better sustain (that was my misconception for a while).

Bertram

[Michael Wolf]

I play a resophonic tenor guitar (in GDAE) and I think it's one of the most versatile instruments. I can play everything from irish tunes to slide guitar, blues and traditionell jazz on it.
I have a much better overview about the harmonys in the fifth tuning, because it seems to be more logical.
I also think that instruments tuned in fifth are sounding better overall, because the unplayed strings are always vibrating a bit and contributing frequencies to the overall sound. And fiths are sounding full and harmonic. Quarts don't.

This is one great Tenor guitar player: Tiny Grimes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93EIw41FOFo)
The story goes that he invented the Rock'n Roll in 1946. As far as I know he played the tenor all through his life.
Unfortunately I don't know if he really tuned his guitar in fifths. Could have also been the so called "Chicago tuning", which is six string tuning without the two deep strings. Though this is normally used on plectrum guitars/banjos, because of the longer scale.
Tiny's Boogie (http://www.geocities.com/bighollowtwang/sounds/TinyGrimes1626Boogie.mp3)

[southcoastsounds]

I came to my octave mandolin after a long break from classical guitar playing. I reached a point with c. guitar where I seemed to be spending all my time playing scales and exercises just to stay where I was - my right hand ability seemed to have peaked and left me permanently stranded with nowhere to go other than repetetive playing of second-rate performances.

I decided to return to my first love - folk music and took up the English concertina (an antique instrument which I still play and love), but how I missed "twang" in my life, the sound of the plucked string.

This year I met someone who had an octave mandolin, and as I messed about with his instrument I began to realise that perhaps this was a way back to fretted instruments but without the glass ceiling imposed by my inadequate right hand fingers.

I bought my first octave mandolin in June just before going to France for two weeks to live in a rented cottage in Brittany. My poor wife had to endure morning after morning filled with "twang", and with the ceramic tiled floors and metal shutters on the windows, it sounded like someone playing in a bathroom but with the treble amplified even more.

I came back from France in love with the octave mandolin and have been taking lessons in it ever since - I am fortunate to live near a very good teacher who teaches me a wide range of music - classical (Bach etc) to Irish folk, via Neapolitan tunes. I guess the octave mandolin is the last instrument I will take up at this stage of my life, but boy do I love it. I'm now having one made to my own specifications by a local maker Alex Willis of www.willisguitars.co.uk and take delivery in February 2008.

Yes, its a great instrument and I find a whole new world of music opening up to me.

Tom C

[JeffD]

Mandolin will always be my first love, but that tenor guitar forced a sea change in my thinking, and I am a mandola player because of it.

[Jim Garber]

www.tenorguitar.com/ (http://www.tenorguitar.com/) -- Good for the mandola also.