Re: From viola to Mandola
Originally Posted by
Tatyana
Thank you for your welcome! I played today for an hour and my left hand fingers are hurting!!! :-) I did find some books on tenor banjo which has the same CGDA tuning and will try them. Chords are troublesome for me since I am mostly used to single line melody on viola. I am having fun, though!
As a professional violist, I am curious what type/model ("level", if you will) of mandola instrument you have been playing?
Having played a little bit of fiddle, I experienced quite a difference in the hand position, and tensions and strains on the left hand/fingers, between the fretted and violin/viola category instruments. I associate a wider fingerboard with more comfort and fingering ease, where I expect you might be finding the opposite, being used to a narrower viola fingerboard and probably a shorter scale.
Re: chording, you can get a long ways using 2-finger chords, or double-stops, especially when combined with an adjacent open string. As you are already playing simple classical viola repertoire (!), I would guess you have already had your mandola set up by a good luthier or tech. If not, a good setup can very significantly improve playing comfort and fluidity.
Last edited by acousticphd; Sep-30-2015 at 5:43pm.
Reason: typo
Jeff Rohrbough
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