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Thread: Newbie!!

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    Default Newbie!!

    Hi all! I am an absolute newbie to the mandolin. Have been playing electric bass for 40 years and decided to try something new. My first mandolin from the Mandolin Store should be here in 2 days. Very excited and looking forward to getting to know the instrument and make my way around that itsy bitsy little neck/fingerboard. Any way, just wanted to say "Hi" and see if anyone had any good recommendations of where to start as a complete newcomer. I have been poking around on Mandolessons.com and a few YouTube videos to get some basic information. First thing I notices was the mandolin is tuned like an upside down bass so hopefully the transition won't be too overwhelming. Any suggestions for a newbie would be much appreciated. Cheers!

    Ivan the Terrible

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    Registered User Charlie Bernstein's Avatar
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    Default Re: Newbie!!

    Hey, Ivan!

    I'm pretty new to mando, too, and have gotten lots of good advice here. You came to the right place.

    Here's a great starting place, recommended by a lot of the people here: Mike Marshall's mando tips

    Bass and mando? If Chris Hillman can do it, you can, too.

    Keep on pluckin'!

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    Default Re: Newbie!!

    Thanks mucho! I will give that a look.

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    Default Re: Newbie!!

    As a long-time electric bassist turned mandolinist-wannabe, let me first say WELCOME! My first experiment with a mandolin was a disaster because, compared to the huge neck on my old Music Man Stingray bass, a mandolin neck felt like a popsicle stick with threads on it . . . but after just a small handful of minutes, I adapted quite easily. (Now I have the opposite reaction - when I go from mandolin to bass, it feels like I'm playing a barn door!)

    You will get lots of advice here - look into all of it, find what works best for you, and you will be well on your way in no time. Keep us posted along the way.

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    not a donut Kevin Winn's Avatar
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    Default Re: Newbie!!

    I'm also a longtime bassist that recently came into the mando fold. Really loving my Eastman MD315, and it didn't take too long before I could switch back and forth between mandolin, guitar and bass with relative ease.

    MandoLessons.com is a great place to start. There's also a lot of information in the Learn\Listen section of the Café. Search for PickLoser's 'Guide To DoubleStops' too.

    I would advise against thinking of it as an upside down backwards bass. That approach really slowed my progress for the first couple months. You'll only drive yourself nuts...

    And Welcome from another Oryguniun...

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    Default Re: Newbie!!

    Speaking of oryg-onions, me too. Welcome.

    So. Bass and mandolin. An extremist on both ends of the spectrum. Kinda characterizes Oregon as a whole in one persona.

    I know you will be having a good time learning the mandolin. Just think of it as an itty bitty bass. With frets. Tuned different. Picked different. With a lot more notes per inch of neck. Easier to transport as a carry-on. And you get to play melody sometimes. Other than that, pretty much the same.

    Seriously, Mandolessons.com is great. So is Bradley Laird. Also Pete Martin. Both the latter have a good selection of free lessons and are well worth checking out on youtube. All three are members here with frequent posts.
    New to mando? Click this link -->Newbies to join us at the Newbies Social Group.

    Just send an email to rob.meldrum@gmail.com with "mandolin setup" in the subject line and he will email you a copy of his ebook for free (free to all mandolincafe members).

    My website and blog: honketyhank.com

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    Thanks for the advice! So nice to see there are other bassists who have make the mango-leap successfully. I am a bit concerned about adapting from a 34" to 35" scale bass to a mandolin that has a neck that looks like a pencil. My big hands that are a plus on bass may be a problem on the mandolin. I'm also in PDX! Hopefully there are some local places that may have open jams or just go listen to people who actually know how to play.

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    Bahaha! That sound like a perfect comparison of bass and mandolin! Pretty much the same instrument, only completely different!
    I live just down the road from you in Tigard! Small world!

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    Registered User Ivan Kelsall's Avatar
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    From one Ivan to another - you might want to loose the appelation ''Ivan the terrible''. If you read up on the guy,he was a psycopathic murderer given to bouts of insane rage :- " In one such outburst, he killed his son and heir Ivan Ivanovich." Not a nice guy - he didn't play mandolin either.

    Anyway - what make / style of mandolin are you getting ? - any further questions can be more accurately answered if we know that,also what style of music will you be playing ?. Every bit of info.helps to answer questions better,
    ''Ivan the F'ing awful''
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ivan Kelsall View Post
    From one Ivan to another - you might want to loose the appelation ''Ivan the terrible''. If you read up on the guy,he was a psycopathic murderer given to bouts of insane rage :- " In one such outburst, he killed his son and heir Ivan Ivanovich." Not a nice guy - he didn't play mandolin either.

    Anyway - what make / style of mandolin are you getting ? - any further questions can be more accurately answered if we know that,also what style of music will you be playing ?. Every bit of info.helps to answer questions better,
    ''Ivan the F'ing awful''
    Well, the above description sounds pretty accurate! 😝 Actually ivanthetrble comes from my dear departed Russian blue cat named Ivan. We lost him a few years back when he was just shy of his 22nd birthday. Back when yahoo had limits on the number of characters you could use in an e-mails address and "ivantheterrible" was too many letters, so it got shortened to ivanthetrble (often confused as Ivan the treble). I have an Eastman MD515 F style coming and as far as style of music I like bluegrass but my R&R background also makes Maggie May, Losing My Religion and The Battle of Evermore favorite mandolin tunes. Nice to see another Ivan!

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    Default Re: Newbie!!

    Quote Originally Posted by ivanthetrble View Post
    Well, the above description sounds pretty accurate! �� Actually ivanthetrble comes from my dear departed Russian blue cat named Ivan. We lost him a few years back when he was just shy of his 22nd birthday. Back when yahoo had limits on the number of characters you could use in an e-mails address and "ivantheterrible" was too many letters, so it got shortened to ivanthetrble (often confused as Ivan the treble). I have an Eastman MD515 F style coming and as far as style of music I like bluegrass but my R&R background also makes Maggie May, Losing My Religion and The Battle of Evermore favorite mandolin tunes. Nice to see another Ivan!
    You are speaking my language, good sir! If you like R.E.M., here's a lesson I recently posted:


    One correction to it, on the "All you hear is" line, the chord is actually:

    3
    3
    2
    0 and not the

    0
    0
    2
    2 that I show in the video (I did say it might not be exactly right!)


    I'm a noob too. You can see my noob thread here, in case it's at all useful:

    https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/s...-jack-question

    I've joked a lot that I only know 3 R.E.M. songs, and Battle of Evermore....but just yesterday and the day before, I added 2 10,000 Maniacs songs to my repertoire, Everyone a Puzzle Lover and Back O' the Moon. You can find them on YT to play along with, and like LMR and YATE, they use basic chords.

    There are some things I've picked up on around here that are unlike the world where we come from:

    -Many people use incredibly and inexplicably expensive picks (the main brand being called a Blue Chip).

    -Many of them put a cage on the back of their mandolin, called a Tone-Gard, which allows the back of the mando to vibrate freely, increasing volume (and like the picks they are also crazy expensive.....$75...just asking to be crushed by the import market.....the mandolin seems to attract folks with a lot of disposable income!).

    -Another thing is there is a special technique on the mandolin called "chopping" which I'd never heard of before I came here. You can learn about that here:


    (all of this guy's videos seem pretty good)


    Oh and also, if you're interested in Rocksmith (since you play bass), I've managed to slap together a hack version of a MANDOLIN song in it, using an altered bass tuning (PC only of course). Right now it's in the rough early stages, but you can see a demo of it here:

    It's a demo and my playing is not as good as in the lesson video, because I'm doing new things that I learned while transcribing the song correctly, like raking into the E on the 5th fret). Also the volume ratio is off because I'm pointing a camera at the TV and the mando is drowning it out)

    I plan on doing a few REM and 10,000 Maniacs songs, at very least, and hopefully someone over at Customsforge.com has enough interest in Bluegrass or other mandolin styles to make some other mando-centric songs (I'm not there yet, personally), but if you already happen to play RS, it's just one more way to learn.


    Welcome to the forum! We noobs gotta stick together!
    Last edited by Billkwando; Jun-14-2017 at 3:16pm.

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    Default Re: Newbie!!

    Welcome to our wild, wacky world. Be prepared for a lot of fun, sore fingers, frustration and pure joy. It will all come together with practice. Good luck.

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    mandolin slinger Steve Ostrander's Avatar
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    Default Re: Newbie!!

    I'm also a bass player, and a guitar player, but I spend most of my time on mandolin.
    Living’ in the Mitten

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    Quote Originally Posted by Billkwando View Post
    You are speaking my language, good sir! If you like R.E.M., here's a lesson I recently posted:



    Welcome to the forum! We noobs gotta stick together!
    Indeed! Thanks for the video links! They look like they have some great info. Not really sure where or what style of playing will evolve but trying to stay open to all forms. Should have an instrument in my hands tomorrow. Can't wait!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Denny Gies View Post
    Welcome to our wild, wacky world. Be prepared for a lot of fun, sore fingers, frustration and pure joy. It will all come together with practice. Good luck.
    I am hoping my bass player callouses will be enough to keep the sore fingers to a minimum but the mandolin strings look a lot more like cheese cutters than the 135 sized B string on my 5 string bass.

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    Default Re: Newbie!!

    Quote Originally Posted by ivanthetrble View Post
    I am hoping my bass player callouses will be enough to keep the sore fingers to a minimum but the mandolin strings look a lot more like cheese cutters than the 135 sized B string on my 5 string bass.
    I play guitar and bass regularly and I haven't had sore fingers at all. You'll probably have an easier time with the chop chords too, should you choose to learn them, because you're already used to longer stretches.


    Quote Originally Posted by ivanthetrble View Post
    Indeed! Thanks for the video links! They look like they have some great info. Not really sure where or what style of playing will evolve but trying to stay open to all forms. Should have an instrument in my hands tomorrow. Can't wait!

    I'm in the same boat! All I know is that I like R.E.M., 10,000 Maniacs, and Crash Test Dummies (all have mando).....and that I like the sound of the mandolin! My assumption is that I'll find my style through playing around with it, and looking for places to use it in home recording. I also like to try to make sliding melodies combined with open drone strings, which always sounds great on any acoustic instrument.

    I'd never heard of him before I came here, but it never hurts to watch Chris Thile videos. He'll give you ideas for different ways you can play the mandolin, and he's just so dang passionate about it that that in itself is inspiring.




    Let's say Thile is the Satriani of the mandolin, then that would make Bill Monroe the Jimi Hendrix (he died back in like '96). I had never heard of him before coming here either. Can't hurt to check out videos from them both:




    Oh and another tip is that mando players don't usually change their strings every month like clockwork, as many of us guitarists tend to do. Many like to let the strings "mellow" so it's not as bright, with so many overtones that new strings can cause.
    Last edited by Billkwando; Jun-14-2017 at 5:15pm.

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    Default Re: Newbie!!

    Rule 1. Don't think upside down bass. No good can come from it.

    Rule 2. No excuses for hand size. Small hand can make squished chord shapes easier, large can span seven frets. Six of one, half dz. of the other.

    Rule 3. Get a decent mandolin. You already did that.

    Rule 4. You may not have callouses on the tippy tips of your fingers, at least not totally for the technique mandolin requires. My guitar/bass callouses needed to expand toward the tips of my fingers. You need to approach the strings more vertically to avoid muting the next string over. No pain, no gain.

    Rule 5. When you get a new mandolin, you only get 48 hours to a week before it is mandatory to start thinking about an upgrade. There is only one exception, and that is to buy a Loar, so if you want to skip all this nonsense, go right to that. It will buy you a year or two before you start thinking about finding one that may be slightly better.

    Rule 6. You must buy between 50 and a hundred picks. After that, cave and buy a Bluechip, which you may or may not like better than a .50 pick.

    Rule 7. When logging in to the Cafe, go right to the classifieds.

    Rule 8. You must do penance for taking up mandolin by listening to Chris Theile. After you feel sufficiently bad, listen to him when he was fourteen. If you feel you need to work up to this, find a YouTube video of Sierra Hull when she was 14.

    Rule 9. There is a million dollar prize for anyone who can resist playing a bluegrass lick for a year after taking up mandolin. So far no one has claimed it.

    Rule 10. You must resist the urge to be annoyed at the question, "what's that?"
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    Default Re: Newbie!!

    Oh and another tip is that mando players don't usually change their strings every month like clockwork, as many of us guitarists tend to do. Many like to let the strings "mellow" so it's not as bright, with so many overtones that new strings can cause.
    I have been noticing in other threads about how often to change strings. A couple of my basses had flat wound strings and the only reason I will ever change them is it they break. Like that warm worn in sound they have after they have been played for a few years. That and bass strings are about $35-45 per set. Hopefully mandolin strings are significantly less per set.

    ITT

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    Quote Originally Posted by Br1ck View Post
    Rule 1. Don't think upside down bass. No good can come from it.

    Rule 2. No excuses for hand size. Small hand can make squished chord shapes easier, large can span seven frets. Six of one, half dz. of the other.

    Rule 3. Get a decent mandolin. You already did that.

    Rule 4. You may not have callouses on the tippy tips of your fingers, at least not totally for the technique mandolin requires. My guitar/bass callouses needed to expand toward the tips of my fingers. You need to approach the strings more vertically to avoid muting the next string over. No pain, no gain.

    Rule 5. When you get a new mandolin, you only get 48 hours to a week before it is mandatory to start thinking about an upgrade. There is only one exception, and that is to buy a Loar, so if you want to skip all this nonsense, go right to that. It will buy you a year or two before you start thinking about finding one that may be slightly better.

    Rule 6. You must buy between 50 and a hundred picks. After that, cave and buy a Bluechip, which you may or may not like better than a .50 pick.

    Rule 7. When logging in to the Cafe, go right to the classifieds.

    Rule 8. You must do penance for taking up mandolin by listening to Chris Theile. After you feel sufficiently bad, listen to him when he was fourteen. If you feel you need to work up to this, find a YouTube video of Sierra Hull when she was 14.

    Rule 9. There is a million dollar prize for anyone who can resist playing a bluegrass lick for a year after taking up mandolin. So far no one has claimed it.

    Rule 10. You must resist the urge to be annoyed at the question, "what's that?"
    Rule 1. That is going to be hard to do but I will try. When I watch YouTube videos and they are playing a G chord or C chord I immediately see it as an upside down bass. :-(

    Rule 2. Seven frets, WOW! Cool!

    Rule 3. Covered!

    Rule 4. I have had blisters before. Probably would be disappointed if I don't get at least a few mando-blisters at some point.

    Rule 5. Well, I thought this was pretty much a given! GAS is pretty much a fact of life isn't it?

    Rule 6. Bahahaha! I have seen these Bluechip picks on websites and notices they are kind of spendy. Don't have them yet but it seems mandolin players use fairly heavy picks?? I would have thought it would be the other way around, thin strings, thin picks? I have a Fender "heavy" and some Dunlop 1.0 and 0.88s that I would occasionally use for bass. Need to go thicker?

    Rule 7. Try to avoid that for the time being but I can already tell the draw is strong.

    Rule 8. It is nice to look at videos of people who can do things you can't even imagine doing. Victor Wooten is that way for me on bass.

    Rule 9. I think the $$$ will be safe. :-(

    Rule 10. Is "its a tiny bass" an appropriate answer??

    ITT

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    Quote Originally Posted by Br1ck View Post
    Rule 9. There is a million dollar prize for anyone who can resist playing a bluegrass lick for a year after taking up mandolin. So far no one has claimed it.
    HOORAY, I FINALLY WON SOMETHING!

    I have nowhere near the talent to be able to play any bluegrass lick, so in 8+ years of playing, I have never tried.

    Whomever is holding the checkbook can make the check payable to me . . . and I'll donate 90% of it to the Mandolin Cafe.

    Now, where is my credit card?

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    Quote Originally Posted by ivanthetrble View Post

    Rule 10. Is "its a tiny bass" an appropriate answer??

    ITT
    No. But "it's a tiny upside down bass" would do.

  26. #22
    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Newbie!!

    Quote Originally Posted by ivanthetrble View Post
    Back when yahoo had limits on the number of characters you could use in an e-mails address and "ivantheterrible" was too many letters, so it got shortened to ivanthetrble (often confused as Ivan the treble).
    Actually I was going to congratulate you on that clever name for a mandolin player: Ivan the Treble. Welcome to the wonderful land of mandolin madness. I agree that thinking about a mandolin as an upside down bass will probably help very little. Just think of it as another instrument altogether. You will adapt.Stick with it. it will be worth it.

    I also play bass but only occasionally through my long life as a musician. Switching to various fretted and stringed instruments is fun, tho, even those tuned differently. Best of luck!
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    not a donut Kevin Winn's Avatar
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    From September to May, Taborgrass is in session. You might want to check it out as a way to learn and meet other players.

    Also, for your listening pleasure, look up Andrew Marlin of Mandolin Orange:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cm50tiwKPM

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    From ivanthetrble - "That and bass strings are about $35-45 per set. " Cheap !. A decent set of Double Bass strings will be in the order of £182 UK = $232 US.

    Shop around for strings & try sets of the better,more popular brands/gauges. Not all mandolins will respond in the same way to the same strings as another mandolin - they are ALL different. GHS A270's / D'Addario EJ74's are 2 popular brands. The gauges are the same except the A270's have a.016" "A" (2nd) string. DR MD11's are the same gauges,but are a stronger sounding string. They last a long time as well. Also - try as many different picks as you can of varying shapes / thicknesses & materials. The same strings will sound different with different picks - so it's really down to finding the string / pick combo. that suits your mandolin & gets the best from it. It takes time,but it's fun !.

    D'addario EJ74's :- G = .040" / D = .026" / A = .015" / E = .011"
    GHS A270's :- G = .040" / D = .026" / A = .016" / E = .011"
    DR MD11 = As per. EJ74's.

    A very popular inexpensive pick that you could try out,are the Dunlop 'Primetone' picks. They come in various shapes/ thicknesses & in 2 types. You'll see the 2 variants at the top of this webpage :-
    https://www.google.co.uk/#q=Dunlop+P...picks&tbm=shop ,
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    The UPS man just came. I'm a mandolin owner! wOOt!!!!
    Of course this also means that I am now officially part of the "more gear than talent" club.

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