Boom-chick strumming patterns for mandolin?

[Miltown]

How do you all approximate on solo mandolin the boom-chick playing of bluegrass guitar? On an open D chord, for example, playing D (3rd string) on the 1 and A (4th string) on the 3 is obvious, but what do you all do on the 2 and 4? Play just the bottom two treble courses, or all 4 courses?

And what are your favorite boom-chick strumming patterns for other chords, open or otherwise?

Any advice appreciated.

[keithb]

I play boom-chop. Bass note, then a muted chop. Joe Walsh is a master of mandolin accompaniment, if you're looking for examples.

[Mark Wilson]

I got started on this video:


Banjo Ben has a great lesson on his mandolin rhythm technique

[ralph johansson]

How do you all approximate on solo mandolin the boom-chick playing of bluegrass guitar? On an open D chord, for example, playing D (3rd string) on the 1 and A (4th string) on the 3 is obvious, but what do you all do on the 2 and 4? Play just the bottom two treble courses, or all 4 courses?

And what are your favorite boom-chick strumming patterns for other chords, open or otherwise?

Any advice appreciated.

Why would anyone try to "approximate" the role of an instrument that has fewer strings and is tuned a minor tenth higher? In your example, the "bass" notes, d, and a, would be in the upper half of my vocal range. Why not simply leave the role of the guitar to the guitar. Whatever role you assign to the mandolin would be determined by other instruments in the band, the guitar, bass, piano and/or percussion. The mandolin comes on top of that.

What you call the "bottom" strings incidentally appear to be what I would call the top, or highest, strings ...

[Mark Gunter]

The OP never followed up on this at all. I enjoyed the Don Julin snippet that Mark Wilson posted that day, it contains a lot of teaching in a very quick tutorial there. It was poignant to me in many ways, not the least of which, I had been practicing chording with that same tune WBB and had only just started a week or so before this was posted - and I was playing with the same chord shapes that Don Julin used in his second example there except for the Em, which I was shifting down to x223 for.

Anyway, as to 'Why would anyone try to "approximate" the role of' a guitar on a mandolin, that seems a bit of a cheesy shot to aim at this apparent newbie. Who's to say he is playing with any kind of an ensemble? Maybe he's playing solo and trying to find a way to make a vocal accompaniment? We all do not have the same style and goals, and obviously we'll not all play just the same.

To the OP's question, the video of Don shows an answer in his first example accompaniment style. Something akin to the Boom-chick accompaniment style can be effective on mandolin, however you shouldn't be aiming for an exact transposition of guitar lines and guitar technique. Use a mono bass note, like Don Julin does, rather than stressing over an alternating bass.

I would encourage the OP to seek a mandolin style of his own - using guitar knowledge to his advantage in doing so - rather than trying to slavishly copy or follow guitar patterns. The former can give you an advantage in learning mandolin; the latter can be a hindrance.

If OP is still following this thread, just have fun playing and find what sounds right to your own ears.

[Mandoplumb]

Sure have fun and do what sounds right to your own ears, but what I think Ralph was saying and I agreed is if you want a guitar sound play the guitar. There is several ways you can accompany yourself with a mandolin none probably as good, solo, as a guitar, but why try to approximate a guitar with a mandolin. Let the mandolin sound like a mandolin, just my opinion.

[Miltown]

Yeah, I wasn't so much interested in slavishly imitating guitar strumming patterns, as just trying to figure out ways to play interesting rhythmic accompaniment while I sing (so, yes, I was thinking about solo rhythm playing). Given that when I first started playing mandolin I almost exclusively played in a bluegrass jam context, my rhythm playing was stuck for some time on just playing chop chords on the off beats.

This video is basically the kind of thing I was looking for (the very end of it, especially):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNDnvirSCBg

Mostly, I'm just trying learn as many strumming patterns as I can.

By the way, that Julin video is very helpful, and also the advice to just focus on a mono bass note, rather than worrying about alternating notes (though I think that can have its place). Thanks!