OK so here it is. (Told you I can't keep a secret long.) And I have never heard anyone advocate this or talk about it. While my Skype teacher is for classical, I believe it will provide advantage for any genre.
Keep the mandolin leaning a little forward of vertical. For a bowlback you just turn it away from you a little. For all others, (when playing without a strap) you just kind of keep the mandolin on its front edge. Raise the back edge just slightly.
Keep the left hand where it was, but put the mandolin a little forward. A little.
OMG. It makes Big Bill Bluegrass chords easy to reach, it makes pinky stretches easy to achieve. It makes shifts up and down the neck easier.
I can't seem to do it using a strap. So I took the strap off, and held the mandolin pretty much the way Mike Marshall explains.
Hitherto I kept the mandolin either vertical, or really, a little back from vertical, so I could peek at the finger board I suppose. With it forward I have to use the edge dots or just the feel of it.
The important thing is that the left hand is unchanged, no angle between wrist and arm. The bass side of the neck is just rotated a little closer to the hand. The mandolin itself feels like its closer to my hand, or really it feels like my fingers are longer.
I find it gigantic, though I just started and I keep forgetting. It seems a little easier to do on a bowl, but same advantage on any mandolin. And I can't do it with a strap. (This is not a huge problem because I rarely play with a strap, and I almost never ever play standing up.)
It is making my playing so much easier I can't believe I never heard of this before. Maybe it was correcting a problem unique to me. But try it. Wow.
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