I've been playing mandolin on and off for 10+ years. I'm mostly a guitar player, who's played all kinds of guitars, in nearly all music genres for the past 35 years. I was a classical guitar performance major in college in the '80s, and have played 1,000-2,000 paid gigs in country/rock/metal bands, done my own solo nuevo flamenco material, smooth jazz covers, etc, etc.
I "GET" guitar and have for many years. But as much as I've loved the mandolin and learned the notes (I used to learn Bach violin partitas from sheet music, learned new grass by ear, etc), and as much as I loved the instruments (I've had 5 or 6 mandolins)… I never really GOT mandolin. I was trying to relate to the instrument through my lifelong guitar-centric nature.
But after a couple of year absence from mandolin, I got back into it last month... and bought an Eastman MD515 mando, and then an MDO305 octave a few days later, and then an MDA mandola a week after that. And this time... I've let go of trying to relate to the instrument(s) as a guitar player, and am just laying-back and trying to accept it as its own thing. And it's working! I'm now feeling less "stiff" in my playing, and I'm fighting things less. I feel as though I've made a real breakthrough here and am on my way to actually feeling like a mandolinist... instead of a guitar player who fiddles around on mandolin and knows some tunes. Don't get me wrong... my journey has only begun and I wouldn't dare hold myself up as being any kind of an expert. But at least I'm not feeling frustrated. Part of what I had working against me is that I've always been a bit of a perfectionist. The guy who inspired me to even pick the instrument up is Chris Thile. Since my guitar history was so long and varied, and my abilities developed over three and a half decades... it's hard for me not to feel frustrated about falling so utterly short as an instrumentalist. It felt like completely starting-over. But that's only half-true. I'm a musician, with knowledge about music in general. But the tuning and the mindset is completely different. That mindset really is key... because once I fully accepted that difference and embraced it (rather than seeking to be a guitar player with a mandolin sound), it was then that I finally felt like I had begun the journey to becoming a mandolinist.
P.S. I love the mando, octave, and mandola equally... and switch back and forth between them a lot. But I'm finding the mandola to be the perfect compromise for me. Octave scale is a stretch for my small hands, but mandolin seems to be pretty cramped. The mandola loses some of those sweet highs of a mando, but adds some of those sweet mids of an octave. And fits my left hand just right. But I love all three and intend to keep playing all of them.
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