I hate to admit that I don't know the answer to this, but I'm willing to expose my ignorance to become more knowledgeable.
I don't have access to a real mandolin teacher here, or even a fake one. I had a few lessons when I started mandolin playing a few years ago, before I got Shanghai'ed by grad school. No chopping content there. Not much practice for a couple o'years there...
I've heard chop chords played on some dealer's web sites that sounded like a cleanly fretted chord, released at the last moment (A, G, etc.).
When I watch videos of people performing bluegrass, it sounds more like they're touching down on all positions, but not really fretting all notes. Almost like you do a harmonic-- just dragging the fingertips on the notes of the chord, then letting off to make the chop chord.
I've tried it both ways, and it sound better when I just kind of touch on the notes-- it gives that nice CHOP, CHOP sound. It's not very loud, but it's not real loud when I hear others do it on recordings.
I know this is hard to do in words, but I'm curious how you all Cafe experts describe your chop techniques.
Eh?
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