Some great mandolin playing

[jpfeifer]

Hi Everyone,

I have been bitten by the Mandolin bug after getting a mandolin as a birthday present this year. It's been fun learning some tunes and getting some picking technique on it.

If you're like me and have been playing guitar for a while, I would encourage you to pick up the Mandolin also. So much of your technique will transfer over directly. You just have to spend some time getting familiar with the tuning and adjusting to the tiny frets. It's also a really good workout for the right hand because you have to concentrate on using really even up/down strokes to get the right tone.

Part of the fun of this instrument is that the strings are tuned in 5ths from each other. This makes certain things much easier when you're playing scales. They tend to layout on the fret board in very even patterns. The other part is that you can easily create fast runs with really big interval jumps (it's kind of like cheating as comparted to guitar). But then other things are harder to do than guitar. Overall, it's a lot of fun.

Here is a clip from my favorite mandolin player at the moment. This guy plays with the group Nickel Creek.


Here is another monster mandolin player, Marty Stuart. He has great timing and plays some very cool sounding bluegrass runs:


-- Jim

 

[Robert]

Nice stuff! You make me want to go and buy a mandolin now. Great. I just spent a lot of dough on a Suhr and a Marshall!

Here is a great tune with John Hiatt and the guy on mandolin is doing a fine job here. Amazing how much a mandolin does to a tune like this.

 

[peachhead]

One of my favorites, Ricky Skaggs.. Some pretty nifty banjo work in here too.

 

[jpfeifer]

Those are great clips guys!

I really like the way Mandolin and guitar sound together (as the John Hiatt video showed), and you can beat Ricky Skaggs for great Bluegrass playing.

Another style that I really like that seems to be popular with mandolin players is Gypsy Jazz (Django) kind of things. Check out this clip. In this clip the Guitar player and the Mando player are both playing some great lines:

 

[sunvalleylaw]

I really enjoy the Nickel Creek guys, and they were the first to really draw my attention to Mandos. My instructor is a great Mandolin player, and has a very, very nice Gilchrist mando, along with another nice but less expensive one he plays out at gigs more.

Here is a link to some clips of his stuff. http://www.publicradioband.net/chipbooth/index.htm
I really like the mandolin on the Santa Fe number.