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R. Kane
Dec-13-2004, 5:38pm
Hi everyone in CBOM:

I am coming from fingerstyle guitar to the mando family. Saw Andy Irvine in a workshop earlier this year, and the notion has been gathering steam. My immediate goal is to get to where I can chunk (or perhaps roll) away at the edges of old time music ensembles at summer workshops, etc. (I could have done this with a guitar, but I do love the sound of a low C, the guitar parts are so...limited, and I'm not adverse to challenges.) So, defying reason, I didn't buy a mandolin or an octave mandolin for my first foray into 8 strings, I bought an old K1 mandocello from an internet listing. I'll have it checked out by a luthier when it arrives this weekend. But assuming its ok.

It looks like the scale length of the K1 is similar to my guitars, and I can do four fret stretches in first position on them. Have no idea what the mc chord shapes will look like, but it remains to be seen if this is the worst idea I've ever had....so here are the variations on my question:
what would you do to learn to play this beast?

Find a teacher? what kind, i.e., a mandolin teacher, or a cellist, or ..?

Any media mc instruction available? will the tuning differences (CGDA) make transposition of mandolin media impossible?

Get a chord book? for tenor banjo?

Learn to drive an octave mandolin first?

Complicating this is my shamefully slow sight reading. I'm definitely going to do some woodshedding.

Thanks in advance.

Richard

violmando
Dec-13-2004, 6:13pm
Tenor banjo chord books will work great; cello music works great for melodic stuff. There isn't much out there published for mandocello--I play it too! I think it has a special timbre. Feel free to try some young cello methods to whip your sitereading into shape.

jc2
Dec-14-2004, 11:08am
Learn your fingering for melodic stuff from cello methods books. If you try to use mandolin fingering or just stretch for notes, you will destroy your hands. Cellists use shifts instead of reaches and you will end up knowing the entire fingerboard much better, besides not ruining your tendons.

R. Kane
Dec-14-2004, 3:05pm
Thanks for the responses.

Chord book and beginning cello methods instructional media are on order.

I had figured on shifting for melodies: its a natural extension of my guitar playing.

I guess the questions that I still have are what kind of teacher to find, and whether I should learn octave mandolin first. I am often driving through Providence RI, home of the Providence Mandolin Orchestra (and presumably some potential instructors).

Its an adventure.