Re: Newbie question: Mandolin for other instrumentals
Just a few words of, I hope, wisdom:
Most here started on guitar, so you're in sympathetic company.
Some folks get excited that mandolin's tuning is the bottom 4 strings of guitar ... backward. Others find that information useless, misleading, and confounding. Where I found it helpful early on was for transferring chords, especially if you remember that the guitar's low E-string COULD be fretted (same as the high E) but is not always. Good example is open D chord: On guitar it's (2)00232; play the mirror image of the bottom fours strings and it becomes 2002 on mandolin (yep, just happens to be symmetrical!).
A complicating factor is that, with closer-spaced frets and further-tuned strings than guitar, there are more fingering variations available, even in "just" 1st position. A C chord could be 0230, 5230, 0233, etc. before moving up the neck. Which one you chose is part of the fun.
IF you read notation:
- Mandolin's E & D strings are read EXACTLY the same as guitar. (Most are unaware that guitar "sounds" an octave lower than written, as was I was for 5 decades!)
- Mandolin's A & G strings have the same notes as the guitar's, but an octave higher/lower. THAT helped the notation-reading a lot.
FWIW: One of my earlier accomplishments on mandolin was getting a fairly good version of The Eagles' "Witchy Woman". Almost anything can be done!
- Ed
"Then one day we weren't as young as before
Our mistakes weren't quite so easy to undo
But by all those roads, my friend, we've travelled down
I'm a better man for just the knowin' of you."
- Ian Tyson
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