Practicing Mandolin to prepare for Octave

I used to play the tenor banjo years ago, but the brightness of the sound caused me to drift into a nylon stringed 5-string banjo, played clawhammer style. I tend to prefer deeper sounds, especially when practicing by myself. I’m much more into Irish music now, and after hearing a few octaves and ‘zouks played in trad sessions in Ireland this summer, I decided I wanted to try the octave mandolin.

I recently ordered an octave, but since it’s going to be months ‘til it’s delivered, I picked up a simple mandolin to practice in the meantime. I was ignorant of the 2 frets per finger method, so I started playing the way I remembered from the tenor banjo. Then I heard about the 2 frets guideline, so I switched. But THEN I heard that a lot of octave players use the guitar fingerings … now I’m trying to decide if I should switch back.

Since I know enough about myself to say that I really want to play the octave more because of the lower register, and the current mandolin is just a placeholder, is it a bad idea to keep practicing the mandolin-style fingerings when I’ll probably have to go back to guitar/octave/1 fret per finger when the octave arrives?

I didn’t feel like I gained that much speed from going to the 2 frets per finger method – but I haven’t played many songs that go up the neck. Even with the guitar fingerings, I found that I needed only a few shifts, and I really could get frets 1, 6, and 7 by stretching index finger and pinky. I’m wondering how much it would hold me back, in the future… Any advice? Thanks!

An interesting point you make here, J. I play mandolin family instruments as well as guitar, and came to the mandolin from guitar. I play mandolin in the "prescribed" way - 2 frets per finger but generally on the octave i revert to guitar fingering as you are doing. I have never found it a big problem going from mandolin to octave, and I know that for many of the tunes I play I do tend to use mandolin fingering even on the octave. The tunes are generally Scottish pipe tunes and only have a range of 9 notes, so do not demand that we go up the fingerboard often if at all. THe octave suits those tunes with its lower register. I also have fairly big hands and a wide finger spread after years of guitar and bass playing, and I find that some mandolins are a bit too tight for me with their fairly narrow nut width. I am fortunate that the instruments I play are made by myself and my mandolins have a 32mm nut width and a scale length of around 375 mm which I find to be more comfortable for me.

As long as you are playing and finding no real problems, keep having fun

Sounds like you should try out a tenor guitar, play them like a tenor banjo but, the sound is so much sweeter than a banjo!
I use one finger per fret on my octaves.

A lot of the speed in any fingering method comes not from the efficiency of the method itself, but from practice.

I started as a cello player, long ago in elementary school, so for me the fastest way to finger any instrument with a longer scale than a mandola is "cello style" - two frets each for the first and fourth fingers, one fret each for the middle two. Decades of repeated scales and runs under my fingers have made this more of a determining factor than the scale length of the instrument. My octave is 21", tenor guitar 23", baritone tenor guitar and cello 27", and I finger them all the same because ultimately the psychological speed of knowing which finger has which note trumps any kind of spatial efficiency.

So just pick a style and then practice, a lot, until the speed comes. Django played his Selmer with a thumb and only two fingers. There are no rules, only conventions. Choose a convention for yourself and stick to it, and have fun!!

I think you'll find the octave to be a completely different instrument than mando. My hands aren't large enough to play OM or Cello in mandolin fashion effectively, so that's out for me. I would learn mandolin with "mandolin fingering," and then adjust to octave fingering when it arrives, if your hands won't allow your ring finger to cleanly reach the fifth fret. I bought my octave expecting to just be able to transfer mando fingering, and got a little frustrated when I couldn't. If you expect it to be substantially different, it helps from a patience standpoint. Knowing this, I recently bought a mandocello, and am having a blast with it!

I too come from a guitar background, and have been gradually working my way down from long scale instruments (bouzouki and octave mandolin, Mandola ) down to what is almost a mandolin (my Old Wave 10 string). The octave was quite natural for me as I could use my guitar fingering, one finger per fret, and shift position when needed. I just could not get my head around mandolin fingering until quite recently. It seemed counter intuitive to me. Anyway, I use mandolin fingering now on my 10 string, 15" scale. A bit of a stretch but it makes a lot more sense now.

Robbie