When did you realize mandolin was your primary instrument?

[William Smith]

When I was a young teenager in the early to mid 90's I got tired of showing up to jams with everyone playing guitar! So I knew a few things on the mando and well that's how it started!

[Joey Anchors]

When I stopped playing bass professionally back in 2010, I was on the search to learn a new instrument. Tried blues harmonica, guitar, and then saw someone playing a mandolin in 2012. I was sold!

It’s been a very slow learning process but I’m enjoying it!

[Bertram Henze]

I've often told this story, but here goes. After a youth darkened by unvoluntary violin lessons, I had stopped playing music altogether. After graduation and after having moved for my first job, on my daily way to work there was a music shop, and they had this small instrument hanging in the window...
I found that it was tuned like a violin, that I could re-use my left-hand fingering. When I went to sleep that night, with the mandolin lying on a table beside the bed, I had a strong feeling of being on the right path to something good. I never had had this feeling with any other instrument before. And I'll say you should never leave a shop with an instrument in hand unless you have that feeling.

[michaell]

Yesterday?

[Bill Cameron]

I started playing guitar in 1970, fiddle in 1977, and mando in ‘79.

After a long learning curve, felt competent on guitar about 10 years in, on fiddle got to half-decent after a good 20 years in the woodshed, and the mando...well it just always worked for me right from the get-go. Always seemed to fit in, whoever I played with. Mind you, I had a lot to learn, but it always seemed like more of a straight-line progression then the incredibly long and shallow learning curve that took me from beginner to decent on the other instruments.

I played in a community fiddle orchestra from 2000-2005. My fiddle has been pretty much hanging on the wall since ‘05. I fell on the ice in my driveway not long after, left shoulder and elbow took all the force of the landing, shoulders have never been right since. Hurts too much toplay fiddle for more than 5 minutes or so. Playing fiddle is very weird physical motion as many of you know.

No matter, I started a Celtic pub band in ‘06, where we switched instruments a lot, but I have always held down the mandolin chair. We don’t have much fun but we make a lot of money, or something like that.

I really like the trio that band has evolved into. We played our last, pre-Patty’s Day gig on Mar 14. Hope there’s more to come. Since 2016 I have been living half the year in Cape Breton, where I am known in sessions as “the guy from Ontario who plays mandolin.” I’m angling to get a better Maritime nickname, but it’s a start.

Thanks for asking.

[Pandouros]

Would love to hear from other folks in similar situations.

Great post, and good to read all the responses, and to know I'm not the only one who followed a convoluted path to the mandolin.

Started out with guitar in the 90s (classical, and eventually Stratocaster in the 00s), and it is still (if only mostly by others around me) seen as my main instrument. As many here have already said, and I can only repeat, I'll always love guitar.

Around '07-'08 my interest and focus shifted to world music and Balkan and Middle Eastern (historical) lutes. Around that time I dabbled with mandolin and mandola as well but for some reason never got serious. Currently, I mostly play the classical guitar and the lavta (also known as politiko laouto in Greek, or simply lute of Istanbul), a long neck, fretted lute reminiscent of a colascione (but more strings and more frets).

Last month I picked up the mandolin again. It was as if a whole new world had openend up. Then, because of my preference for historical instruments, I fitted it with Aquila Reds (nylgut). That was it. Couldn't understand how I had let this little guy fly under my radar for so long -- right under my nose.

Can't say it is my primary instrument to be honest. But it feels as if it may well become that. Time will tell.

[LadysSolo]

Mandolin is not my primary instrument, but it has displaced guitar. Piano is still primary, with mandolin and recorder (soprano and alto) secondary (portability is much better LOL!!) Guitar is third, and still teaching myself oboe and violin (4th.) Mandolin may eventually move up to primary if I get better at mandolin than I am at piano.