There's a lot of mandolin players here ... more than there are mandolin players in the wider world of this music I think. So what is it about this instrument?
The mandolin was my first instrument when I was kid, but since picking up the fiddle many many years ago, I haven't touched one. But my uncle died last year and left a bunch of instruments. A couple of guitars, a banjolele, a bonjolin, a tenor banjo, a mandolin, a fiddle, and a few whistles. One of the whistles is a thirty or forty year old generation high D that's an absolute belter, it's probably the instrument worth the least of them all, but by far the best. One of the guitars is quite good and my brother has it. And the mandolin is not bad, quiet, but in tune (once I spent a deal of effort fixing the bridge). The rest are planks.
So I've been plonking away on it in the house. What strikes me immediately about it is how hard it is to play tunes on. There's just so little to it. It's so constrictingly limited. I can't stand the way that once a note is sounded, there's nothing more you can do with it. It's very frustrating. You can't play rolls on it ... you can substitute the triplet thing for a fast roll, but there's nothing anywhere near aproximating a slow roll. Pitch is fixed. You have to pluck almost every note (you can pull off and hammer on a bit, but not much).
The only single thing I'm finding enjoyable being able to do with it is to play up the dusty bit with ease. But that's only because I'm a lazy git who's never learned to do that on the fiddle ... and not that you need to be able to do that to play diddley tunes anyway. And, to be honest, it's physically such an easy instrument to play, especially quietly, it suits a late night couch potato.
Because it's there.
Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?" with the retort: "Because it's there", which has been called "the most famous three words in mountaineering"
Welcome (back) to the world of mandolin playing Llig. In my case, it was an accident of fate - it found me. But I've learned a lot about this music through it - even if only by finding out what it can't do. It's a pleasing enough sound as such, but I still think it will never quite capture this music.
It's also quite quiet for practice, which can be useful, and now I have a fiddle, I have been surprised by how little physical force it requires (at least in some respects, such as fingering) in comparison. All my finger-strengthening has been done - have fiddle, will play!
Frankly, Michael, I don't believe that you play the fiddle for any of those particular effects - I think you play the fiddle because the fiddle is the sound that grabs you. You only see the lack of sustain or of certain ornaments as limitations because you're looking at the mandolin as a defective fiddle. And so probably you shouldn't play the mandolin - you've got a fiddle that works, why would you want a broken one?
Me, I pick up the mandolin to play a tune when the sound of the mandolin is the sound that grabs me.
It has its own charm, different from the charm of the box or the whistle, and sometimes that's what I'm after. I like the sound of a fiddle, as well, and if I'd found my way into the fiddle maybe I'd play that as well, but I don't play the mandolin to make up for the lack of fiddle in my life. I play it to make up for a momentary lack of mandolin in my ears.
While it's true that without the constant source of sound, like a bow, or the breath of a flute and whistle, it is a bit more challenging to do much with notes once they've been played, it's not impossible, by any stretch of the imagination. You just need to try *not* to do what you would do on the fiddle, because that won't work. But you can do some wonderful piping-inspired articulations, by striking a ringing string with a free finger, to get a hammeron-pulloff in quick succession, and then plucking the string again with the plectrum. That kind of stuff. It's different than what you would do for a roll, but it has a very distinctive sound to it.
Ben is right about Luke too. I know you know Luke, and even though he's back in oz, it shouldn't be hard to find recordings of him playing a pipe march, or something kind of slow, so you can hear the intricacies of his expression on the mandolin.
I feel you! I'm a fiddler who has been handed a crap mandolin (my dad's first one from 50 years ago), and didn't take to it, though sometimes I feel like playing the thing on a whim. Usually if I'm too lazy to play my fiddle. I try to not see it as a defective fiddle, but I do anyways.
And not all mandolins are quiet.... my husband is trying to learn, and somehow he acquired what I am sure is the loudest mando that has ever existed. Always fun to hear beginners practicing an extraordinarily loud instrument!
I'm not really that interested in the particular sound of an instrument, more the actual music itself. I'm not really that interested in particular instruments, just the music.
I think there are players of instruments not suited to this music that I really enjoy, Edle Fox for example, it's just that I don't understand why people make it so hard for them selves ... trying to shoehorn the music, struggling with compromise.
"Making it hard for themselves"? How? Sure, if they really want to be playing the fiddle, then it's a bad choice, but if what they like is the sound of the tunes on the mandolin, then they're making life easy for themselves. And since they're playing the thing for years, learning the ins and outs of it, getting the hang of the plectrum and left hand and all of that the way you've gotten the hang of the fiddle, it's probably a lot less limiting of an instrument for them than it is for you.
llig, regarding edel fox, you appear to be the only one struggling with the compromises in her music. she doesn't appear to be struggling at all to me.
Some people like the sound of the mandolin so much that they are prepared to spend the rest of their lives trying to play them. God knows why -- but then He invented the mandolin.
so, I inherited a non-articulate fretted instrument...
It great that your back Mr Gill! (Honest!)
Well, as you've said so many times you just can't get the articulation on fretted doodahs...
And, by the way, can I borrow your uncle's banjolele. I'll come up to Edinborougoough and wreck your session with my pointless doodling and pick it up and you can collect it when you come down to B B King's Wig Museum in Sarf Lunden sesh sometime. Does it sound like deal?
ha ha, no deal. The crap guitar, the banjolele and the banjolin and the tenor banjo have been donated to Sunnyside Daycare Center where they will be played with for one week while being wrecked totally wrecked and then sent by Lotso to the tri-county land fill ... with absolutly zero chance of being saved by "the claw".
Checked your blood pressure with one of those portable monitors, before and after playing the mando?
The hunched posture and ferocious grip most mando players adopt is just about the worst combination you could imagine for sending your blood pressure up.
My girlfriend has made occasional efforts at learning the thing - and only found out she had a BP problem after having a stroke. The mando wasn't the immediate trigger in her case, but it could be enough extra stress on the circulatory system to blow somebody's gasket. There aren't many worse instruments for this (GHB, trumpet, maybe oboe).
Slighly off topic:
I was at a sesh a couple of weeks ago and I was playing the old baritone uke and, let's call him, Ed (who usually plays fiddle) turned up with his viola (which is what he plays for his 'day job') and proceded to play the old jigs and reels on it.
Anyway it was a visual conundrum. From the other end of the sesh it looked like they were all on acid or wotteffah..
Mine looked like the smallest six string devil (albeit 4 strings) they had ever seen along side the biggest fiddle they had ever seen (both doodahs are about the same size).
I knew I shouldn't have had that last pint of cider...
< it's physically such an easy instrument to play, especially quietly, it suits a late night couch potato.> I found this to be the case too, I took less effort. I remember sitting once playing mandolin and thinking that tune I was trying would sound good on the fiddle, Took one look at the fiddle case, and said to myself,
'' Nah cant be ar$ed '' lol. Lucky the guy asked for it back.
jim,,,
FIDDLE4: Indeedy do! This maxim works for ukes as well. I can sit in an armchair and watch TV and paly the old ukr, no trouble. You try doing it with that bloody geat lump of wood that is the six string devl...
I don't think the concertina is suited to Irish music, you can't even play rolls on it. But then that's one of the brilliant things about the music, it's so inherently malleable. It's possible, if you're inventive, humble to the core of it and intelligent enough, to play this music brilliantly on any number of strange instruments that, physically, should be impossible. Instruments so blatantly unsuitable as the feckin banjo, for example.
I hate the concertina. It's a horrid parpy hideous thing. Horrible, quite horrible. And yet I can listen to Edel Fox all day, she's absolutely wonderful.
Jaysus.. Great stuff! I never heard anyone say this before. The concertina is a rubbish instrument for Irish music..! Very challenging to get my head round this...actually its not..I love the concertina..adore it. ..and so I will just smile and feel some sympathy.
I can appreciate the reasoning, though. The sustained, continuous tones of fiddle, flute, & pipes shapes so much of the rhythm & articulation in many styles of playing Irish music, not to mention varying the pitch, it's different on concertina & mandolin. But, as Llig notes ~ that's where someone like Edel Fox comes in.
Why would you want to play rolls on the concertina or the mandolin? Rolls are just a way to divide a note into three on instruments that can't do it easily -- like the fiddle or the pipes.
Now just imagine if Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi escaped to Ireland! No doubt he'd soon be running the country, then he'd probably be insisting that we could only use Pipes, Fiddles & Flutes to play Irish Music ...... or maybe he'd choose & insist on us all using the Ghaytah, Jawzah & Khallool instead!
I have a simple approach, I enjoy playing Irish Music on the instruments I enjoy playing & I leave others to do the same.
You just have to take a wee look at the natural world to see a whole host of strange, weird & exotic creatures, many of which, it has to be said, aren't exactly 'best suited' to their environment, yet they still make the most of their limitations & in the process add so much colour & diversity to our world.
Now just imagine, for a moment, sessions for ever more with only Pipes, Fiddles & Flutes allowed to enter & perhaps you can see just how much we would lose.
Of course it's not the instrument at all, it's the player & they should be allowed to let their music sing through whichever instrument moves them!
So, in answer to the question:
"So why choose it to play tunes on?"
That phrase, "Because it's there", irked Edmund Hillary all his life. He made it as a throw away remark to an irritating journalist who was annoying him. What's astonishing is how the meme has spread. Spread by people too stupid to think of a better reply
The good news - I should have inherited a concertina but when my dad got it from his uncle he lent it to someone and never asked for it back. The bad news - no-one wanted to borrow the banjolele.
Ben Steen- yeah, I was given a crap mandolin. However, I've also played some really incredible mandolins, and while it made it more enjoyable, I still would rather play the fiddle or guitar. Mando still just seems either like a small zouk, or a funny combo of fiddle and guitar to me. Try as I might, I can't stop thinking of it like that.
"Because its there" was a remark made by Mallory not Hillary.
So how did it irk Hillary? He never made the remark, and what evidence have you got that he was annoyed by a remark, that was made 29 years before he climbed Everest.
Yeah, sorry, getting my mallory and hillory mixed up.
I read an interview with the jounalist for the New York Times (I think), I wish I could remember where, who said the remark was off the cuff, just a sort of joke, but Mallory went on to explain in more detail his reasonings. The jounalist said he wrote this up, for the article, but it was cut.
You'll never really know about these things, but this version does seem consistent with the way newspapers work.
There's a programme from the 70's where Barney McKenna & Tony Mc Mahon do Europe. It includes a sequence where Barney an Italian apparently improvise a mandolin duet and it sounded really good. I tried mandolin for a while. Wouldn't mind trying again for our quiet session and possibly try some bluegrass
One mandolinist I like very much is David Grisman. I find his playing flows effortlessly in the style of Molloy in full flight on the flute.
I remember an incredible performance when he dueted with Stephane Grappelli, early ‘80s I think. Also he played in many line-ups, including one with Garcia.
One of my favourite traditional Irish Music mandolinists is Andy Seagroatt from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; most times he’d play fiddle, but sometimes would strike up on the mandolin.
I keep the mandolin on the wall by my bed. I don't even have to sit up to play it. I like that. Nice quiet music to make first thing in the morning. I never take it to a session. It is just my wake up instrument. It also suits me when I want to find/discover a melody. I can pick around on it and typically the mystery is solved.
I think that, in the interests of pluralism, I'm gonna have to see if I can find a tune to play on the thing that doesn't go better on the fiddle. I'm not talking taste.
If I can't find one, I'll write one. And all yous plinky plonkers can have it.
So now I can play ITM sitting late at night on my couch and first thing in the morning in bed. Does anyone have any ideas how I could induce sleep-mandolin ?
Ptarmigan, you might as well say small sessions are elitist as to say that playing certain instruments for a certain style of music is elitist. Each instrument has it's strong points & its' limitations.
I thought that in its Italian habitats the mandolin was generally played in duos or ensembles of them, fairly tightly arranged and harmonised. Maybe in ITM it is pushing the limits of its range, and is lonely and miserable.
Someone mentioned strange, weird & exotic creatures in the natural world which aren't 'best suited' to their environment, but make the most of their limitations. I can't think of any like that. It strikes me that the strange, weird & exotic creatures now in existence are formidably well adapted to the niches they happen to occupy, so long as these don't get trashed up by natural cataclysms or by us.
Personally, I think if you are going to have plucked strings playing melody, the mandolin fits much more comfortably with fiddle and flute than the banjo does.
Now I just can't get on with that clip at all. Far too much plinky-plinky hiding what is probably a perfectly good melody. That is what is wrong with almost all non-'classical' playing of the mandolin. Give me Vivaldi any day.
I agree with skreech - the mando does fit well with flute and fiddle in a second-line kind of a way, and in fact we have had mandolin and uillean pipes together sounding quite good unaccompanied here - but the way to go has to be cleanly played melody lines a la fiddle. I don't think it will ever make a fully convincing front-line instrument here.
I've pleasantly surprised myself on the fiddle so far - O.K., nobody here would want to listen yet but I am getting some reasonable, basically-played tunes and have got through the six OAIM free lessons already. Even the bowing is quite intuitive, even if it needs a lot more precision. So all thse years on the mandolin have clearly helped - but I am just enjoying making loads of proper fiddly (fiddlee?) noises that I simply couldn't do on the mando. All those compromises simply are no more...
Now that I like - if only it didn't make me so depressed Lovely piece of music and a playing style that much more suits the instrument IMHO. Now he just needs a more appropriate style of instrument Bowl-back would be good...
a piece of music I'm still quite fond of, though I hardly touch that stuff these days.
I've a hankering for a mandolin, myself, for some of the reasons that have been mentioned - cute and lightweight and easy to just sit and noodle on of an evening - and hope to come across one at the goodwill store,
Most tunes are working well for me on the mandolin family at the moment...Try incorporating the chords and get a rythym going and play the tune and chords at the same time. Mostly closed and/or partial chords - but with the main notes on the open strings if you can. I can also give private tuition to your grandmother and teach her how to suck ova if you want Llig. I am mucking about with keys as well...have a mandola that is tuned to EBF#C#. Makes me learn more fingering, chords and position changes:hurts like hell, but I'm havin' fun.
And also agree with the mention of Mr Luke Plumber of the Hornpipes. Nice controlled use of velocity, power, amplitude and Nyah.
You can't compare the mandolin to the violin. It is its own instrument.
Ornaments are played with the right hand, so playing with a pick becomes very important. Having the right pick, and learning how to use it are critical for its use. I recommend a heavy pick.
The shape of the pick is also important. If you play mainly melodies, you will want a pick with a narrow tip. If you play mainly rhythm, you'll want something a little wider. If you play a mix of both, you'll want to experiment until you find something right. I like a heavy guitar pick that is tapered but slightly larger at the tip like a Dunlop or a Snarling Dogs "brain pick".
Once you determine the pick size, shape and thickness that you like most, you'll want to practice picking patterns with your scales:
a) 4 quarter notes/note all down strokes
b) 4 quarter notes/note down and up strokes
c) 8 8th notes/note down and up, emphasizing the 1st note of four
d) 8 8th notes/note down and up, emphasizing the 2nd note of four
e) triplets - 2 sets down up down up
f) triplets - 2 sets emphasizing the 1st note of each set
so, I inherited a mandolin
so, I inherited a mandolin
There's a lot of mandolin players here ... more than there are mandolin players in the wider world of this music I think. So what is it about this instrument?
The mandolin was my first instrument when I was kid, but since picking up the fiddle many many years ago, I haven't touched one. But my uncle died last year and left a bunch of instruments. A couple of guitars, a banjolele, a bonjolin, a tenor banjo, a mandolin, a fiddle, and a few whistles. One of the whistles is a thirty or forty year old generation high D that's an absolute belter, it's probably the instrument worth the least of them all, but by far the best. One of the guitars is quite good and my brother has it. And the mandolin is not bad, quiet, but in tune (once I spent a deal of effort fixing the bridge). The rest are planks.
So I've been plonking away on it in the house. What strikes me immediately about it is how hard it is to play tunes on. There's just so little to it. It's so constrictingly limited. I can't stand the way that once a note is sounded, there's nothing more you can do with it. It's very frustrating. You can't play rolls on it ... you can substitute the triplet thing for a fast roll, but there's nothing anywhere near aproximating a slow roll. Pitch is fixed. You have to pluck almost every note (you can pull off and hammer on a bit, but not much).
The only single thing I'm finding enjoyable being able to do with it is to play up the dusty bit with ease. But that's only because I'm a lazy git who's never learned to do that on the fiddle ... and not that you need to be able to do that to play diddley tunes anyway. And, to be honest, it's physically such an easy instrument to play, especially quietly, it suits a late night couch potato.
So why choose it to play tunes on?
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ...
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Luke Plumb knows what he's doing.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
I use a cheap mandolin as a way of practicing fiddle fingering for tunes I'm learning while sitting late at night on my couch.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by stoneboy2
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
To me, mandolins are more or less lost in a session but come into their own in a tight band setting.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by nicholas
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Because it's there.
Mallory is famously quoted as having replied to the question "Why do you want to climb Mount Everest?" with the retort: "Because it's there", which has been called "the most famous three words in mountaineering"
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Joseph Tailyour
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Welcome (back) to the world of mandolin playing Llig. In my case, it was an accident of fate - it found me. But I've learned a lot about this music through it - even if only by finding out what it can't do. It's a pleasing enough sound as such, but I still think it will never quite capture this music.
It's also quite quiet for practice, which can be useful, and now I have a fiddle, I have been surprised by how little physical force it requires (at least in some respects, such as fingering) in comparison. All my finger-strengthening has been done - have fiddle, will play!
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ian stock
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
p.s. I suggest you never pick up a banjo.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ian stock
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Couldn't think of a great use for a mando, but then I remembered this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYYbK2sDaJ4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by tradshark
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Frankly, Michael, I don't believe that you play the fiddle for any of those particular effects - I think you play the fiddle because the fiddle is the sound that grabs you. You only see the lack of sustain or of certain ornaments as limitations because you're looking at the mandolin as a defective fiddle. And so probably you shouldn't play the mandolin - you've got a fiddle that works, why would you want a broken one?
Me, I pick up the mandolin to play a tune when the sound of the mandolin is the sound that grabs me.
It has its own charm, different from the charm of the box or the whistle, and sometimes that's what I'm after. I like the sound of a fiddle, as well, and if I'd found my way into the fiddle maybe I'd play that as well, but I don't play the mandolin to make up for the lack of fiddle in my life. I play it to make up for a momentary lack of mandolin in my ears.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Maybe God is trying to tell you something llig
While it's true that without the constant source of sound, like a bow, or the breath of a flute and whistle, it is a bit more challenging to do much with notes once they've been played, it's not impossible, by any stretch of the imagination. You just need to try *not* to do what you would do on the fiddle, because that won't work. But you can do some wonderful piping-inspired articulations, by striking a ringing string with a free finger, to get a hammeron-pulloff in quick succession, and then plucking the string again with the plectrum. That kind of stuff. It's different than what you would do for a roll, but it has a very distinctive sound to it.
Ben is right about Luke too. I know you know Luke, and even though he's back in oz, it shouldn't be hard to find recordings of him playing a pipe march, or something kind of slow, so you can hear the intricacies of his expression on the mandolin.
Maybe there's hope for us all yet, in your eyes!
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Reverend
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
I feel you! I'm a fiddler who has been handed a crap mandolin (my dad's first one from 50 years ago), and didn't take to it, though sometimes I feel like playing the thing on a whim. Usually if I'm too lazy to play my fiddle. I try to not see it as a defective fiddle, but I do anyways.
And not all mandolins are quiet.... my husband is trying to learn, and somehow he acquired what I am sure is the loudest mando that has ever existed. Always fun to hear beginners practicing an extraordinarily loud instrument!
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by fiddletreegypsy
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Nice for hornpipes
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by stoneboy2
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
fiddletreegypsy ~ it's a crap mandolin? Yeah, I could see how that might disappoint you.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
I'm not really that interested in the particular sound of an instrument, more the actual music itself. I'm not really that interested in particular instruments, just the music.
I think there are players of instruments not suited to this music that I really enjoy, Edle Fox for example, it's just that I don't understand why people make it so hard for them selves ... trying to shoehorn the music, struggling with compromise.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ...
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
"Making it hard for themselves"? How? Sure, if they really want to be playing the fiddle, then it's a bad choice, but if what they like is the sound of the tunes on the mandolin, then they're making life easy for themselves. And since they're playing the thing for years, learning the ins and outs of it, getting the hang of the plectrum and left hand and all of that the way you've gotten the hang of the fiddle, it's probably a lot less limiting of an instrument for them than it is for you.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Jon Kiparsky
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
You've baggage.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
llig, regarding edel fox, you appear to be the only one struggling with the compromises in her music. she doesn't appear to be struggling at all to me.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by DaveL35
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Some people like the sound of the mandolin so much that they are prepared to spend the rest of their lives trying to play them. God knows why -- but then He invented the mandolin.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by gam
so, I inherited a non-articulate fretted instrument...
It great that your back Mr Gill! (Honest!)
Well, as you've said so many times you just can't get the articulation on fretted doodahs...
And, by the way, can I borrow your uncle's banjolele. I'll come up to Edinborougoough and wreck your session with my pointless doodling and pick it up and you can collect it when you come down to B B King's Wig Museum in Sarf Lunden sesh sometime. Does it sound like deal?
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by yhaalhouse
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
ha ha, no deal. The crap guitar, the banjolele and the banjolin and the tenor banjo have been donated to Sunnyside Daycare Center where they will be played with for one week while being wrecked totally wrecked and then sent by Lotso to the tri-county land fill ... with absolutly zero chance of being saved by "the claw".
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ...
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Checked your blood pressure with one of those portable monitors, before and after playing the mando?
The hunched posture and ferocious grip most mando players adopt is just about the worst combination you could imagine for sending your blood pressure up.
My girlfriend has made occasional efforts at learning the thing - and only found out she had a BP problem after having a stroke. The mando wasn't the immediate trigger in her case, but it could be enough extra stress on the circulatory system to blow somebody's gasket. There aren't many worse instruments for this (GHB, trumpet, maybe oboe).
BP monitors are 15 quid at Lloyds the chemist.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Jack Campin
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
... by the way, I'm not struggling with Edel Fox's compromises, I'm rejoicing in them, as she is.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ...
Calling all viola players...
Slighly off topic:
I was at a sesh a couple of weeks ago and I was playing the old baritone uke and, let's call him, Ed (who usually plays fiddle) turned up with his viola (which is what he plays for his 'day job') and proceded to play the old jigs and reels on it.
Anyway it was a visual conundrum. From the other end of the sesh it looked like they were all on acid or wotteffah..
Mine looked like the smallest six string devil (albeit 4 strings) they had ever seen along side the biggest fiddle they had ever seen (both doodahs are about the same size).
I knew I shouldn't have had that last pint of cider...
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by yhaalhouse
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
< it's physically such an easy instrument to play, especially quietly, it suits a late night couch potato.> I found this to be the case too, I took less effort. I remember sitting once playing mandolin and thinking that tune I was trying would sound good on the fiddle, Took one look at the fiddle case, and said to myself,
'' Nah cant be ar$ed '' lol. Lucky the guy asked for it back.
jim,,,
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by FIDDLE4
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Great that you are back! I am confused with your reference to Edel. It sounds like you are saying the concertina isn't suited to Irish music..
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by big_tab
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
FIDDLE4: Indeedy do! This maxim works for ukes as well. I can sit in an armchair and watch TV and paly the old ukr, no trouble. You try doing it with that bloody geat lump of wood that is the six string devl...
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by yhaalhouse
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
I don't think the concertina is suited to Irish music, you can't even play rolls on it. But then that's one of the brilliant things about the music, it's so inherently malleable. It's possible, if you're inventive, humble to the core of it and intelligent enough, to play this music brilliantly on any number of strange instruments that, physically, should be impossible. Instruments so blatantly unsuitable as the feckin banjo, for example.
I hate the concertina. It's a horrid parpy hideous thing. Horrible, quite horrible. And yet I can listen to Edel Fox all day, she's absolutely wonderful.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ...
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
My mandolin makes quite a nice cheese slicer - thin slice, thick slice, thin slice, thick slice, etc.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Toppish
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Jaysus.. Great stuff! I never heard anyone say this before. The concertina is a rubbish instrument for Irish music..! Very challenging to get my head round this...actually its not..I love the concertina..adore it. ..and so I will just smile and feel some sympathy.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by big_tab
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
I can appreciate the reasoning, though. The sustained, continuous tones of fiddle, flute, & pipes shapes so much of the rhythm & articulation in many styles of playing Irish music, not to mention varying the pitch, it's different on concertina & mandolin. But, as Llig notes ~ that's where someone like Edel Fox comes in.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Why would you want to play rolls on the concertina or the mandolin? Rolls are just a way to divide a note into three on instruments that can't do it easily -- like the fiddle or the pipes.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by gam
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Here we go again, yet another thread which reminds me why I posted my parody on the theory of Instrument Elitism in Irish Music:
The Ladder:
http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/8107/comments#comment173923
Now just imagine if Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi escaped to Ireland! No doubt he'd soon be running the country, then he'd probably be insisting that we could only use Pipes, Fiddles & Flutes to play Irish Music ...... or maybe he'd choose & insist on us all using the Ghaytah, Jawzah & Khallool instead!
I have a simple approach, I enjoy playing Irish Music on the instruments I enjoy playing & I leave others to do the same.
You just have to take a wee look at the natural world to see a whole host of strange, weird & exotic creatures, many of which, it has to be said, aren't exactly 'best suited' to their environment, yet they still make the most of their limitations & in the process add so much colour & diversity to our world.
Now just imagine, for a moment, sessions for ever more with only Pipes, Fiddles & Flutes allowed to enter & perhaps you can see just how much we would lose.
Of course it's not the instrument at all, it's the player & they should be allowed to let their music sing through whichever instrument moves them!
So, in answer to the question:
"So why choose it to play tunes on?"
I say .... Why not?
Cheers
Dick
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Ptarmigan
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Dick -- try playing a brick and see how far you get : ]
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by gam
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Gam, in my part of the country, a brick is not classed as a musical instrument.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Ptarmigan
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
That phrase, "Because it's there", irked Edmund Hillary all his life. He made it as a throw away remark to an irritating journalist who was annoying him. What's astonishing is how the meme has spread. Spread by people too stupid to think of a better reply
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ...
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Ahem. Who ?
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by David50
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
The good news - I should have inherited a concertina but when my dad got it from his uncle he lent it to someone and never asked for it back. The bad news - no-one wanted to borrow the banjolele.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by David50
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Ben Steen- yeah, I was given a crap mandolin. However, I've also played some really incredible mandolins, and while it made it more enjoyable, I still would rather play the fiddle or guitar. Mando still just seems either like a small zouk, or a funny combo of fiddle and guitar to me. Try as I might, I can't stop thinking of it like that.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by fiddletreegypsy
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
@Llig - if you ever get the urge to play "O Sole Mio" or "Santa Lucia", you've got just the right piece of kit for the job ....
... not to mention endless possibilties with tarantellas ...
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Mix O'Lydian
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
"Because its there" was a remark made by Mallory not Hillary.
So how did it irk Hillary? He never made the remark, and what evidence have you got that he was annoyed by a remark, that was made 29 years before he climbed Everest.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Joseph Tailyour
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
I read an article somewhere that suggested Mallory's meaning was deeper than that. More "Hey man, because like, its really *there*" <\ dopehead voice>
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by David50
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
"... not to mention endless possibilties with tarantellas ... "
The more I listen to tarantellas, the more I suspect it is just one and the same tune...
Still, my friends say the same about Irish music.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Janek
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Yeah, sorry, getting my mallory and hillory mixed up.
I read an interview with the jounalist for the New York Times (I think), I wish I could remember where, who said the remark was off the cuff, just a sort of joke, but Mallory went on to explain in more detail his reasonings. The jounalist said he wrote this up, for the article, but it was cut.
You'll never really know about these things, but this version does seem consistent with the way newspapers work.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ...
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
There's a programme from the 70's where Barney McKenna & Tony Mc Mahon do Europe. It includes a sequence where Barney an Italian apparently improvise a mandolin duet and it sounded really good. I tried mandolin for a while. Wouldn't mind trying again for our quiet session and possibly try some bluegrass
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by harmonic miner
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
A Mhíchaill, céad mile fáilte!
Nice to have you back!
One mandolinist I like very much is David Grisman. I find his playing flows effortlessly in the style of Molloy in full flight on the flute.
I remember an incredible performance when he dueted with Stephane Grappelli, early ‘80s I think. Also he played in many line-ups, including one with Garcia.
One of my favourite traditional Irish Music mandolinists is Andy Seagroatt from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; most times he’d play fiddle, but sometimes would strike up on the mandolin.
I really hope you hang around a while Michael!
All the best
Brian x
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by briantheflute
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
I don't mind a bit of Grisman, but it's a little too jazzy for me, too chromatic. Of the Americans, I prefer Sam Bush, his rhythm is astounding.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ...
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
I keep the mandolin on the wall by my bed. I don't even have to sit up to play it. I like that. Nice quiet music to make first thing in the morning. I never take it to a session. It is just my wake up instrument. It also suits me when I want to find/discover a melody. I can pick around on it and typically the mystery is solved.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by oriley
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
I think that, in the interests of pluralism, I'm gonna have to see if I can find a tune to play on the thing that doesn't go better on the fiddle. I'm not talking taste.
If I can't find one, I'll write one. And all yous plinky plonkers can have it.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ...
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
oriley
So now I can play ITM sitting late at night on my couch and first thing in the morning in bed. Does anyone have any ideas how I could induce sleep-mandolin ?
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by stoneboy2
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Ptarmigan, you might as well say small sessions are elitist as to say that playing certain instruments for a certain style of music is elitist. Each instrument has it's strong points & its' limitations.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Ben Steen
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Will you write one like the Eileen Ivers stuff you play.
Can't wait to hear it.
When its written can you start a new thread with ...'so'... too. I like how you do that.
grrrr
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by Hugo Chavez
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
I thought that in its Italian habitats the mandolin was generally played in duos or ensembles of them, fairly tightly arranged and harmonised. Maybe in ITM it is pushing the limits of its range, and is lonely and miserable.
Someone mentioned strange, weird & exotic creatures in the natural world which aren't 'best suited' to their environment, but make the most of their limitations. I can't think of any like that. It strikes me that the strange, weird & exotic creatures now in existence are formidably well adapted to the niches they happen to occupy, so long as these don't get trashed up by natural cataclysms or by us.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by nicholas
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
stoneboy2
I woke up one morning and there was a mandolin in the bed with me. The scary part was that it wasn't mine!
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by oriley
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Personally, I think if you are going to have plucked strings playing melody, the mandolin fits much more comfortably with fiddle and flute than the banjo does.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by skreech
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Why the mando was invented:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mzi1S-KVLKU&feature=related
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Now I just can't get on with that clip at all. Far too much plinky-plinky hiding what is probably a perfectly good melody. That is what is wrong with almost all non-'classical' playing of the mandolin. Give me Vivaldi any day.
but I am getting some reasonable, basically-played tunes and have got through the six OAIM free lessons already. Even the bowing is quite intuitive, even if it needs a lot more precision. So all thse years on the mandolin have clearly helped - but I am just enjoying making loads of proper fiddly (fiddlee?) noises that I simply couldn't do on the mando. All those compromises simply are no more...
I agree with skreech - the mando does fit well with flute and fiddle in a second-line kind of a way, and in fact we have had mandolin and uillean pipes together sounding quite good unaccompanied here - but the way to go has to be cleanly played melody lines a la fiddle. I don't think it will ever make a fully convincing front-line instrument here.
I've pleasantly surprised myself on the fiddle so far - O.K., nobody here would want to listen yet
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ian stock
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Ian—
Fair enough, give this one a listen. Same player:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSZ40V0teGM
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by NEW Pure Drop® Ear Canal Oil
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Pure Drop...
Lovely piece of music and a playing style that much more suits the instrument IMHO. Now he just needs a more appropriate style of instrument 
Bowl-back would be good...
Now that I like - if only it didn't make me so depressed
Ian
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by ian stock
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Wonderful for airs, great for backing songs, especially ballads, but useless for tunes.
That's what bodhrans are for.
Tunes.
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by bodhran bliss
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
oriley
perhaps the mandolin fairy left it ?
# Posted on February 28th 2011 by stoneboy2
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
No superfluous notes here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSDqz1eSXMM
# Posted on March 1st 2011 by Jack Campin
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
This was my first introduction to mandolin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StNAG4gCIxY
a piece of music I'm still quite fond of, though I hardly touch that stuff these days.
I've a hankering for a mandolin, myself, for some of the reasons that have been mentioned - cute and lightweight and easy to just sit and noodle on of an evening - and hope to come across one at the goodwill store,
# Posted on March 1st 2011 by sara505sings
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
Most tunes are working well for me on the mandolin family at the moment...Try incorporating the chords and get a rythym going and play the tune and chords at the same time. Mostly closed and/or partial chords - but with the main notes on the open strings if you can. I can also give private tuition to your grandmother and teach her how to suck ova if you want Llig.
I am mucking about with keys as well...have a mandola that is tuned to EBF#C#. Makes me learn more fingering, chords and position changes:hurts like hell, but I'm havin' fun.
And also agree with the mention of Mr Luke Plumber of the Hornpipes. Nice controlled use of velocity, power, amplitude and Nyah.
# Posted on March 4th 2011 by Greenwiggle
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
The mandolin is great for 3 things IMHO:
1) melody
2) harmony
3) rhythm
You can't compare the mandolin to the violin. It is its own instrument.
Ornaments are played with the right hand, so playing with a pick becomes very important. Having the right pick, and learning how to use it are critical for its use. I recommend a heavy pick.
The shape of the pick is also important. If you play mainly melodies, you will want a pick with a narrow tip. If you play mainly rhythm, you'll want something a little wider. If you play a mix of both, you'll want to experiment until you find something right. I like a heavy guitar pick that is tapered but slightly larger at the tip like a Dunlop or a Snarling Dogs "brain pick".
Once you determine the pick size, shape and thickness that you like most, you'll want to practice picking patterns with your scales:
a) 4 quarter notes/note all down strokes
b) 4 quarter notes/note down and up strokes
c) 8 8th notes/note down and up, emphasizing the 1st note of four
d) 8 8th notes/note down and up, emphasizing the 2nd note of four
e) triplets - 2 sets down up down up
f) triplets - 2 sets emphasizing the 1st note of each set
and so on
Also placement of the right hand is important
# Posted on December 15th 2011 by celticagent
Re: so, I inherited a mandolin
In Irish traditional music, it is unorthodox (and often unwelcome) to play rhythm or harmony on mandolin, IMHO.
# Posted on December 15th 2011 by DaveL35