I once put a mandolin under my chin and then used my fiddle bow to bow the mandolin. LOVED the sound, at that time the sound reminded me a little of Scandinavian nyckelharpa, kind of open and haunting sounding.
If you're not familiar with nyckelharpa, here's one from someone else's YouTube page:
But my bowed mandolin it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing and I didn't pursue it, would have required making a round-top bridge (like on fiddle) to play single notes on 2nd/3rd strings, otherwise they're all double-stops with adjacent strings. I think I was about 15 or 16 years old at the time.
Caution: If you have a prized Lloyd Loar or something, you might not want to attempt that because the rosin from the fiddle bow might not be good for your instrument's finish, I don't know, it doesn't seem to hurt violins though as long as it isn't allowed to build up. Back then I was playing a very bad-quality old plywood-top mandolin so there wasn't much risk involved.
Bookmarks