Playing mandolin has improved my fiddle playing-ALOT !

[fidlplr1979]

I'm sure this has been discussed before but to those pickers out there who also bow a fiddle, you'll know what I'm talking about when I say that techniques and patterns I have learned on mandolin are easily transferred to fiddle and have quit an impact on style and sound. I have learned to do things on the mando that I would have never thought of on fiddle and it's been really fun to take those lines and transfer them over to my main instrument. Now I'm incorporating Bill Monroe-style licks in my fiddle solos and having a blast doing it. Mandolin has been the single greatest tool for me in learning how to play the fiddle (actually picked up a mandolin first) about 20 years ago as a guitarist and then made the transition to fiddle already having some idea of the fingering learned from the mandolin. Now after returning to the mandolin in a big way in the last 6 months, when I pick up my fiddle to play I already have in mind lines and runs that I've practiced on mandolin and it adds a lot to my playing. Just curious how many other fiddle/mandolin players out there agree ? Give me your thoughts

[UsuallyPickin]

Well ..... knowing how to move around a chord sequence on a mandolin yields a solid understanding of double stops for a fiddler and adds depth to backup fiddling. R/

[Tobin]

I agree. I played mandolin for many years before getting the urge to try the fiddle, and I think it provided a good solid base for understanding how to move around the fingerboard. What's funny is that I have been reading a lot of fiddle-specific discussions on other (fiddle-specific) boards, and I'm fairly astounded at how so many fiddlers don't understand the relationships of notes/chords/etc.

That's not to say that I'm a good fiddler yet. The bowing and fiddle-specific techniques are an art form that will take many more years to gain fluidity. But in terms of "basics" like knowing double-stops and partial chord shapes, or being able to play scales and arpeggios, I think they're much easier having started on an identically-tuned instrument with frets. Unlike fiddlers who learned by thinking of finger positions, I think in terms of frets and it makes it much more logical to me.

*edited to add: But being a mandolinist first does have its down side. In order to sound like a real fiddler, I'm learning how to separate mandolin techniques and mandolinny-licks from fiddle techniques and fiddle licks. Some of the licks I use on the mandolin just don't sound very good on a fiddle, and I don't want to sound like a mandolin player when I'm playing the fiddle. Like how guitar players have a hard time not sounding like guitar players when they play the mandolin.

[billkilpatrick]

Exact opposite experience for me - fiddling around in fiddle-land for too many years seems to have eradicated what little i thought I knew about the mandolin - chord structures and progressions in particular. Scales are more or less in tact but the rest is pretty rusty.

[lenf12]

I read somewhere that Kenny Baker kept an old Gibson A mandolin that used to practice his fiddle tunes to get the tune in his ears and under his fingers. He would agree with you fidlplr1979.

Len B.
Clearwater, FL

[Nevin]

The closest I come to being a fiddle player is playing upright bass but playing mandolin has made me a better musician.

[farmerjones]

June 2003 I picked up both pretty much concurrently. I'll say frets helped much for establishing intonation initially. I extrapolated the Four Finger Closed Chord Formation system laid out at Jazzmando.com to the fretless instrument. This really solved the fingerboard for me. Admittedly, I'm lefty playing righty. Picks and bows are never confused for each other. Worse than that, it's a different muscle group for picking than bowing. They are around, but it's a rare person that can run both at a high level. No secret 'round here, I enjoy mandolin, but the fiddle, like a cat, has chosen me. I sometimes to go back and forth; Wonder what tune X sounds like on fiddle? Now mandolin? But tunes like Take Five, or Birdland, I had to first get the finger/phrasing on a fretless fingerboard then, maybe pick up a mandolin. With flatted 3rds, 5ths, 9ths, or 11ths, frets are a pain to me.

[Nate Lee]

Fiddle and mandolin suit each other well. Although there is more that is different than the same, playing both has helped me be better at both. Because of fiddle I learned to play with more sustain on my mandolin, using fewer notes than I used to. Mandolin is a huge help in understanding the fingerboard, giving me a "map" for what I'm doing on the fiddle. Someone above mentioned that they think in frets when playing fiddle, and I do the same. Mandolin chord shapes also expand known double stop options for a fiddler. I tell my fiddle students to pick up a mandolin any chance they get and try their fiddle tunes and chords on it, paying attention to where the frets are, and counting how many empty frets are between finger positions. In this way, the mandolin can act as training wheels for the fiddle, making it easier to play the fiddle in tune. Most fiddlers don't have a clear picture in their mind of where they're trying to put their fingers, so they just put their fingers down and hope for the best. Mandolin can fix that.

[Tobin]

Nate, yep, that's what I was getting at. With no frets on a fiddle, people who learn only on the fiddle can easily get lost in terms of what notes they're playing, or the intervals between them. It takes a different approach to learning when there are no visual or tangible "bumps" on the fingerboard to use as an aid. They do, of course, make those adhesive overlays that simulate fret positions for beginners, but once they graduate past those, they are supposed to be able to do it mentally. Some can, but some struggle with it once they've lost that frame of reference. I find it very helpful to think in terms of frets (or "in between frets" for those notes which need to exist between perfectly-intonated notes), and the mandolin is the perfect tool for it.

Because of fiddle I learned to play with more sustain on my mandolin, using fewer notes than I used to.

This is something that I still am not quite sure what to do with. Because of the ease of playing sustained bowed notes on the fiddle, I will take advantage of it when I'm on the fiddle. But when I try it on the mandolin, I don't like it. It sounds sparse and amateurish, as if I need to be using more tremolo or filling in with a more "notey" approach. That's one of the things I was talking about in terms of being able to separate the styles. What people expect from a mandolin is more "notey-ness", where a fiddle is expected to be less "notey" and use more slurs. It keeps it interesting for me, exploring how to play the same tune on both instruments differently enough to take advantage of what each instrument does best.

[Nate Lee]

Because of the ease of playing sustained bowed notes on the fiddle, I will take advantage of it when I'm on the fiddle. But when I try it on the mandolin, I don't like it. It sounds sparse and amateurish, as if I need to be using more tremolo or filling in with a more "notey" approach. That's one of the things I was talking about in terms of being able to separate the styles. What people expect from a mandolin is more "notey-ness", where a fiddle is expected to be less "notey" and use more slurs. It keeps it interesting for me, exploring how to play the same tune on both instruments differently enough to take advantage of what each instrument does best.

I know the feeling. Sometimes there is no way to play the exact same thing on one instrument or another. Searching for the solution has caused me to play different mandolins than I used to, seeking out instruments with lots of sustain and learning to create a lot more sustain with my left hand. It doesn't work for every situation, but I find that I don't feel the need to fill the spaces much anymore. When I do fill the spaces, I find that about three or four ( often syncopated) notes do the job that eight or more notes used to do. That said, I probably still play nearly twice as many notes on the mandolin as I do on the fiddle.

On a related note, there's a musical figure that is ever present in bluegrass mandolin that is used to fill some of the spaces. I refer to it as the "doodle-doodle-doo". It's the one you'll often hear people like Adam Steffey play. Example: If the fiddle played a sustained F# on the E string, the mandolin would play E F# F# G# F#. This is a pattern that I think most of us use, and lately I've been exploring variations that do the same thing without playing that exact pattern for some variety.

[Mandobart]

I've posted before that I started out on violin as a kid in grade school. I got fairly good on it and played through high school. In the 8th grade I started learning bluegrass (spurred a lot by Tim O'Brien and Hot Rize, who toured through our area with some frequency). Anyway like some of you I drifted away from regularly playing music as I grew up, mainly just sporadically picking guitar now and then. In 2008 I accidentally started playing mandolin and all my old BG fiddle tunes just jumped out of that mando. I've seriously been playing mandolin and all mando family instruments ever since. I've also got back into playing fiddle and learning theory. So mandolin led me back to violin and I know I've improved on all my instruments as a result.

[sbhikes]

I tried to play fiddle for many years before deciding to commit to mandolin. I just couldn't get the intonation right and bowing escaped me. I didn't take any lessons, though.

I always kept my mandolin handy in case I wanted to get the tune down straight now and then. One day my fiddle broke so I brought the mandolin to a gig and everybody kept saying, "Wow, I didn't know you actually could play. You're pretty good! Wow, get an earful of that mandolin back there." And so on. So I stopped playing it completely and even sold it recently. Kinda wishing I could try fiddle again, but I am enjoying that the mandolin is pretty to listen to even when you struggle. I'm invited to join groups because of the mandolin (while I never would be invited with the fiddle), and when I play in public I get a lot of attention because for some reason a lot of people have no idea what a mandolin looks like so they ask a lot of questions: "What is that? I've never seen a mandolin that looks like that before." Etc. They want to stop and listen and put a dollar in the case. Of course, our fiddle player makes them put a $50 in the case, but at least I help.

[fidlplr1979]

You guys are saying exactly what I was getting at with the mandolin helping me with the fingering on the fiddle. When I began concentrating on fiddle as my main instrument I would only play the mandolin occasionally and I began focusing on technique and style and became a rather proficient fiddle player (IMHO) and having toured with several regional groups (Hackensaw Boys, Hogwaller Ramblers) I resigned myself to being just a closet-mandolinist. Well enter a new f-5 style mando (I had an A and an F2) and I started playing way more and learning Monroe-style picking that ended up translating well over to the fiddle i.e. the use of flattened 3rds and 9ths But what I found to be most helpful was the finger positioning and the "mental roadmap" of the fretboard that I've always employed coming from a guitar playing background. I've always kind of kept the mandolin fretboard (upside-down guitar) as my foundation for exploring scales and double-stops on the fiddle and now after returning to the mandolin in a big way my fiddle playing has broken through the dreaded plateau we all reach as players. I'm now seeing improvement in not only my playing but also my theory behind my playing. Just my own personal observations , thanks for sharing your experiences everyone

[fidlplr1979]

Also one thing I forgot to mention but I do the same thing as far as using the mandolin to learn a new tune and then transfer over to the fiddle- you don't know how many times I've been playing fiddle at a jam and someone calls a tune I have only learned on mandolin and I have to transpose on the spot-ha ! Talk about learning quick