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Thread: Bass playing helping Mando playing

  1. #1
    Registered User red7flag's Avatar
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    Default Bass playing helping Mando playing

    For a bit over two years, I have been playing bass for our churches Faith band and the last six months for an eclectic jam at an antique store. The last couple of weeks, at the jam and at a music party at our home, I played some mandolin and octave mandolin. My timing has greatly improved. That would be no surprise I guess. What was surprising was that my Mando playing has becone more expressive, more pauses and emphasised notes,. Playing the octave allows me to draw out great tone, given it's awesome sustain. My Mowry GOM, Guitar shaped Ocave Mandolin, has power and tone to die for. The difference is that I can now make that work for me. This my first post in a while, but have Benn lurking in the background getting inspired by this wonderful Care.
    Tony Huber
    1930 Martin Style C #14783
    2011 Mowry GOM
    2013 Hester F4 #31
    2014 Ellis F5 #322
    2017 Nyberg Mandola #172

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  3. #2
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    Default Re: Bass playing helping Mando playing

    If i's double bass, the string tension will make practically anything else feel easy, fretting hand-wise. Every once in awhile i'll drag out my drum sticks and practice pad and *try* to practice snare technique, that also really helps w/playing any other instrument, the feeling of being in the pocket and doing fills tastefully.
    Kentucky km900
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    a pedal steel (highly recommended); banjo, dobro don't get played much cause i'm considerate ;}

    Shopping/monitoring prices: vibraphone/marimbas, rhodes, synths, Yamaha brass and double reeds

  4. #3
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    Default Re: Bass playing helping Mando playing

    For me the experience was reversed - I played bass in bands for about 10 years before I picked up a mandolin, and then found that my bass playing took on whole new dimensions. Based on personal experience, my theory is that whenever you learn a new instrument you begin to see certain musical patterns or playing techniques differently, and then transpose those new ideas on to your old instruments. I'm still a lousy player, but at least I can play badly in many different ways,

  5. #4
    Registered User Simon DS's Avatar
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    Default Re: Bass playing helping Mando playing

    Been playing a ukulele bass tuned in fifths for a while now.
    Try it, you’ll be amazed at how much time you have on your hands!
    Once in a while I’ll look at the notation and think, wow! that’s an eighth note, I remember those!

    I find that while I have all that time I think more about tone, timing, implied rhythms, chords and arpeggios, relationships between intervals in different measures...

  6. #5
    Registered User Mando Mort's Avatar
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    Default Re: Bass playing helping Mando playing

    I play Guitar, Mandolin, Bass and Piano and find that anytime I focus on one for a while, it improves my playing on the others.
    "All of us contain Music & Truth, but most of us can't get it out." - Mark Twain

    Eastman MD615SB
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  7. #6
    Registered User red7flag's Avatar
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    Default Re: Bass playing helping Mando playing

    I have been playing electric bass, but have gotten fairly adept at sounding as double bass like as I can. About a third of what I play is straight ahead bluegrass, although a bluegrass policeman might consider an electric bass an oxymoron for straight ahead grass.

  8. #7

    Default Re: Bass playing helping Mando playing

    Mandolin has helped my guitar playing a lot. Much less sloppy with my picking technique. My electric bass playing over a quarter century left me with an internal clock that works with any instrument I play. I think when playing a new instrument, you need to really get what it can do, what attitude you need to play it correctly. This is the failure of so many guitar players when they play bass. They just don’t get it. But if you understand an instruments’s role in a group, it will improve your playing with any other.
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