Yea I believe the mandolin needs to be expanded and you have to do that with what I call "peripheral" technology e.g. anything that you can add and subtract from the instrument with ease such as my pickups that I build for the purpose. Hybrid mandolins just tend to not feel great and I don't like drilling holes or sticking putty on an F5.
As you pointed out the rhythm is still largely in a traditional bluegrass vein. That might be really hard to break but I do think practicing in different styles on a groovebox/drum machine is important (absolutely love Sun Ra as well, big hero of mine
). Will definitely checkout Dworsky's book as I haven't thought about seriously approaching the mandolin as a drum study, but hey that's why mandolins are the best. Thanks for your feedback!
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