As a guitarist of middling skill for over thirty years, I never thought much about the mandolin and never really thought I liked its sound. Then, at the age of fifty, I heard Chris Thile's recording of the first three Bach Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin. It really blew me away (and I know other cafe members have similarly strong feelings about that music—when will the next three be released?). Now I'm playing mandolin, mandola, and recently salvaged a K2 mandocello, and really enjoying all of them. Part of it is the joy of playing instruments tuned in fifths (unlike the guitar's frankly bizarre tuning), which for me allows much quicker identification of notation with the what I actually hear, so I made quick progress on the mandolin even as I had pretty much reached a plateau on the guitar. The mandolin has some severe limitations, to be sure: lack of sustain, and even the best tremolo technique (which I entirely lack) is a poor substitute for, say, the legato that a violin is a capable of. Still, limitations actually make for very interesting music, in the way that a net makes for very interesting tennis. Best of all for me, the guitar (and different repertoire for it) became more compelling for me, too.
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