Electric Mandolin - A New Context
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, Oct-16-2016 at 2:52pm (3521 Views)
In this posting I wrote about finding a context in which my messing around with electric mandolin makes some sense.
The jamming opportunities I naively sought out have been dead ends. It seems that, for the most part, jamming is not what one does on an electric mandolin.
What I am finding is that as an electric I am an outsider to the mainstream of mandolin and as a mandolin I am an outside the mainstream of electric guitar. I am forced to figure something out on my own.
Well this lack of established paths has spawned a gigantic opportunity. With no mentors, heck, nobody whose advice seamlessly applies, I have been forced to put things together on my own. Instead of looking for an established context, I am looking at building something new.
So from my more organized than usual and careful listening to the natural musical habitat of the electric guitar I have reached an epiphany - really killer electric guitar music is not really separable from really killer drumming.
Maybe, instead of a jam to play in, I need a drummer to play with. I have met up with a rock drummer, a friend of a friend, and over a few diner lunches and much coffee he has started to teach me the history of rock drumming, and what to listen to and what to listen for. He happens to be a huge fan of Ben Thatcher (Royal Blood), and, though before his time, Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa “Shut up and Play Your Guitar”), and I have a fist full of napkins with drummers names and albums and artists I need to learn about. He is also of a mind that short of playing the drums, and practicing the drums, the best thing in the world is talking drums.
Creativity involves new ideas sure, but it also involves letting go of old ideas that don’t apply any more, or don’t apply everywhere. One of these is my general antipathy towards drums and drummers. If I flex on that one little point, I might turn the corner and make something really magical happen. I don’t know where killer drumming and loud angry heavy metal fiddle tunes intersect, but it has motivated me to stay with the electric mandolin and see what I can build out of it that is sustaining, and hopefully, gigantically satisfying.