This is a follow up to the earlier thread. While I really love mandolin, I find that playing it at sessions so difficult that I'm giving some thought to starting a new instrument instead. It is incredibly hard. Speed is an issue. Volume is an issue.
But even more importantly -- for me anyway -- has been the lack of any real peers. You can always find a whistle, flute or fiddle player with more experience at sessions than you. It's HARD to find a mando player that can help you. The fiddle players think you're from mars but don't mind because you can't be heard anyway. The zouk players think you should just give up on the melody and join them.
So you go looking for good instructional material. It's hard to find Irish mandolin books. There are a few, but they're just ok. And learning to play from the books gives you only just so much.
The real issue is that regardless of the exceptions, mandolin as a session component is a fairly rare thing.
Enough whining.
Has anyone else felt this way about mando? Did you switch to something else? I want to play the melodies. Should I just tough it out for a couple more years and hope for the best? Should I dive into flute or something (I'm not a huge fan of fiddle)?
Looking for some feedback from someone whose been there.
My solution? Bit of a cop-out really. Get a nice short-scale tenor banjo; play it at sessions when you need to be heard. But stick with the mando "indoors". Personally I prefer playing the mandolin/octave mandolin when I'm not in company. But the banjo does the trick outdoors.
Alternatively, develop Dan Beimborn's style ... the man can make his mando heard over just about any other instruments in the rowdiest session!
I don't know if George Norman is still in the Athens/Atlanta area, but if you can find him he's a really good mando player. Ask around the sessions. Somebody will know him.
Come visit us in San Francisco. This town is lousy with mandos. I attended a David Grisman workshop at a local music store and there were big, old Sonoma mountainmen toting around these beautifully cherished mandos, young punk kids with mandos covered in local band stickers and duct-tape, long-haired types with the family hobby mando for the night, people like me with midlife crisis mandos like mine...it was a mando mayhem. And, though not in the ITM category, San Francisco also boasts of a geniune mandolin orchestra that gathers together yearly at the Slavonic Cultural Center and plays the lovely, old, and tremulous European tunes.
After deciding on th mandolin for some very unsound reasons, I joined a little group for weekly practice and was feeling pretty smug to be the only mando until another walked in, and another behind her, and one more that just moved to the area from Boston behind him. Sometimes, we got nothing but mandos, and I was thinking of moving on just so I could bring something new to the party. And I contrinue to struggle with speed.
For the times when I want volume, I purchased a mando-banjo. Played it in outdoor setting on the docks of Angel Island and people coming in on the Ferry said that they heard it a good distance out on the water.
But I thought this thread was about ITM on the mandolin... not "dawg music"... anyway... If you want to hear the best of what San Francisco has in the way of ITM on mandolin -- come to the session at the Plough when Marla Fibish is host -- you won't be disappointed.
I can't see how speed could possibly an issue. Bluesgrass players regularly attain speeds that leave ITM in the dust--up over 200 bpm. The 115-125 bpm of a reel in session should be attainable.
Hell, I've only been playing mandolin a few months, and I can lock into a groove at 80 and feel quite comfortable.
~~~
Have you paid attention to your picking? Bad habits here can slow things down. It's a perennial on the mandolin Cafe, but here's a thread I started a while back.
It's fairly easy to attain speed if you're not playing the right rhythm. Attaining speed and making it sound bouncy is quite difficult on mando, especially when you're playing with flute/fiddle players who are speed freaks and who couldn't give a toss about their rhythm.
Stop worrying about your speed. I gave up playing tunes on mando a while back because I wasn't progressing fast enough and I'm impatient. I took up the concertina and couldn't believe how easy it was to play *any* tune, so it meant I could just get on with learning the tunes. I secretly thought "so this is why everyone else seems to find this music so much easier than I do!". There are some brilliant and very quick mando players around, but there's no getting away from it, it's physically harder to play tunes on than flute/fiddle/box etc, and anyone who tells you otherwise is bullsh*tting you because in order to achieve volume/speed you have to be relaxed and have good picking technique. On any other instrument, you can achieve speed whatever, even if you're sh*te.
Look at it this way, in order to pick every note and make each note sound clean with good tone, your hand and pick have to travel a certain distance across the strings just to make a sound right? With a fiddle you're drawing the bow across the strings so you can slur 2 or more notes together. With a box or concertina, your fingers can be hovering over the next few notes ready to press down. Same with the flute - your fingers don't have to be very far away. That's why it's easy to play faster. Here's my advice: you don't have to decide to "give up" the mando completely. Why don't you try out another instrument, and once you discover that you don't have to struggle with tunes anymore, learn heaps of tunes and then come back to your mando and see if you can work on your picking, and only then decide if you want to continue. If you're not keen on fiddle, I'd recommend starting with a whistle and then go on to try flute once you have good technique. It's no coincidence that every young tradkid in Ireland starts out on whistle.
Simon, you were talking about speed and bluegrass players . . . well I was talking to a friend of mine today about exactly the same issue . . and he told me the father of bluegrass mandolin player Bill Monroe , once addmited that when he played a tune he often missed out some of the notes in a tune . . . because they were "passing notes", and it didn't matter to the tune if he played them or not and thats why he appears to play so fast .
Don't mind Sean O Riada. Somebody conscientious enough to consider giving up the mandolin is just the sort of person that *should* be playing it.
During my 10 years or so of playing the mandolin, I haven't come upon all that many other mandolin players. I've picked up bits of technique and style from banjo players (I've taken my mandolin along to a couple of banjo classes), but I've learned the most just by trying to play what the fiddlers, pipers, flute players and box players play. I also play the whistle, which gives me another perspective on the tunes, some of which, I like to think, comes back into my mandolin playing.
Since you play the fiddle, you are already halfway - or some of the way, at least - to playing mandolin. I've been trying to learn the fiddle for about the past year and I suspect you will have an easier time learning to se a pick than I am having learning to tame the horse's tail. I wouldn't worry too much about speed - you can play at home until you feel you can keep up with a session. I admit, even after a decade, I still have problems keeping up with some sessions. I am prepared to accept that I have a certain speed ceiling (I would never make a bluegrass player), but I like the sound I make - some of it, anyway.
Don't think that, because you don't feel like you're making progress, that you should give up. Allow yourself to learn at your own pace. One advantage of not having other mandolin players around is that there is no-one for you not to measure up to.
Thank you for your generous welcome, Mr Gilder. I have attended many of those sessions at the Plough and Stars as an observer. Indeed, I know some of the regular mandolin players at the Plough and have found them to be an excellent source of support, advice, and encouragement. Including Marla.
It was only your pre-session contract he/she (?) had a problem with, Jack. That clause 2.11 that says "no wrong notes are to be played under any circumstances; wrong notes are to be punished by death".
Very very easy to reach great speed on a plucked instrument if you do everything wrong and forget about timing and the certain flow to the tunes that makeTraditional Irish Music what it is.
Don't give it up, get in with a live band and you will be rewarded on that level. Joe Foley in Dublin makes mandolins and trust me on this one, you can hear these a lot better that the norm, They are hand made, expensive but beautiful instruments and a hell of a lot better than the so called vintage ones knocking around or at least thats my opinion ( and many others) maybe in time you could aim to get one.
The mandolin is a great instrument, and one of my friends, who incidentally introduced me to this site, Paul Moclair, plays mandolin. Even when tunes became difficult he stuck with it, and the thing to remember is that if another musician REALLY wants to play with you, they will!
They'll take you through YOUR favourite tunes, and your confidence will grow.
I must address Dow and comments! How can you write about flute players so? That's just total bolleaux!
If you know anything about flute, air pressure, lip tension, angle of head and/or head joint [ let alone that word embouchure - to name but a few requirements integral to flute playing!!!] all come into the equation, and that's equally as important for slow airs as for reels.
EVERY NOTE HAS TO SOUND! WHATEVER THE INSTRUMENT!
So don't be sucked into the idea that some instruments are easier on which to find notes. Real players play every note!
....deciding on whether or not to play a
cut
tip
mordent
double mordent
triplet
untongued triplet
tongued AND fingered triplet
tongued or untongued roll
triple tongued roll
triple UNtongued roll (now that IS a nice ornament)
crann AND ALL ITS VARIATIONS
slurred notes
hooded notes
bent notes
oh!...possibly some of the notes of the tune...how could I forget???
That's a little bit of what goes through a flute player's mind ( alright! My mind!) when I'm playing in a session. Wait till you find out if there's a gig / concert when you have to play VERY WELL!
Every one of these techniques requires so many subtle variations in approach to the instrument.
Dow, do you really think flute players just drop their fingers onto a hole?
Maybe concertinas are just a bit of the "OLD PULL AND PUSH"?
You can take up the fiddle, some of us have. It's not such a great departure, the tuning's the same - and you can play tunes a lot faster on the fiddle. You don't need to give up the mandolin in any case. I haven't.
Yeah, and if you take up the fiddle, you CAN leave notes out ... nobody ever notices in a session
And personally I like the style of flute-playing where you can hear the player breathing, rather than sounding like they're hooked up to an air compressor ... that's what pipes are for
Thank you all. I appreciate the support and comments from everyone. I doubt I will give up. It just gets frustrating sometimes. I'm glad that others have felt the same.
I'm glad too to hear that getting the feel right is SUPPOSED to slow you down a bit. I'd seen that and wondered what my problem was. I am pretty quick with the straight-played bluegrass tunes (alas, it's much easier to find a supportive bluegrass jam than it is to find a supporting ITM session here in the South). I started back at ITM and focused on getting the sound right and BOOM the speed dropped like a stone.
But it's getting better.
I've got the Foinn Session stuff coming to start working with that. and then I'm going back to the sessions.
Err, all I said was that if you play the flute then your fingers hang above the notes, as opposed to having to move your arm to cover the hole. Um, don't they? At least that's what the flute players in Sydney do, maybe you like to hold it differently. I didn't say that it was any easier to become a good flute player than any other instrument. Any instrument has its technical difficulties obviously. I just think that mando is more of a struggle *at first* than other instruments for tune playing. I can say that cuz I've tried both - mando and non-mando. It's not like you have to take a new breath for every note on the flute is it? With flute - one breath = lots of notes in a long phrase. With fiddle - one bow stroke = lots of notes. With mando, one down or upstroke = one note. That's all I'm trying to say.
More or less, Dow. However, you can also play two or three short notes with one stroke on the mandolin as well. At least, I do. It's a sort of "hammer on" or "pull off" effect. You can also introduce cuts etc. Of course, this has to be appropriate to the tune.
I agree, though, that you can do a lot more with one bow stroke on the fiddle.
Actually, at the beginner's stage, I think the mandolin is easier but no one is playing really fast at that stage anyway. Then (as I said elsewhere), it gets easier for flute and fiddle players and harder work on the mandolin. It is achievable though.
Yeah it's the speed thing. I have a lot of admiration for people who stick at it and who can pull off difficult tunes at speed and loud volume with clean sounding triplets. Maybe it's either something you take to or not. I just found tune playing at speed whilst maintaining good rhythm, tone and relaxation a difficult thing to achieve. Taking up the concertina was like a breath of fresh air - playing tunes suddenly became effortless and all I had to concentrate on was improving technique and learning more tunes, instead of constantly feeling as though I was struggling. I really felt for keytonw when I read his 1st post.
As a flute player who also plays a bit of mandolin, I'd say that the mandolin is a lot easier to 'get off the ground' than the flute. It is difficult for a clumsy person like me to play the thing fast and accurately, but I found it easier to learn tunes on because you can see the patterns your fingers make, which reinforces the other ways in which you pick up the tune. I'd always considered Whistles and Mandolins as being particularly 'fast instruments', but maybe that is because I know some very fast players of those instruments. I particularly like playing the mando as a change from the flute because it is NOT up against my face, and that distance is refreshing and feels quite liberating, but I do feel that it lacks the subtlety and range of possibilities of the flute or fiddle, but if you can get into combining chords and melody, and bending those fiddly little pairs of strings, it can be very expressive (I hasten to add that I'm not at that level myself).
I started as a mandolin player, but ended up hating the instrument as it was constaty going out of tune, I could never hear myself, and also wasn't abe to get the sound I wanted.
All the nicer sounds were coming from the other guys in the sessions!
I then got a banjo and moved on to bouzouki and other stringed instruments, but it wasnt until I actually played with the afformentioned Joe Foley and Tom Walsh in Dublin that I started enjoying the mandolin again.
Because in one of these sessions there are not that many players there(early on) and you can hear the mandolin - thats something to consider - maybe you should find a session with less musicians, or get someone to duo with..
the other thing about Joe's session, is that he plays bouzouki - hes good at it and Tom plays Mandola and hes good at that - its usually audible tasterful trad. I can really hear the mandolin, cause it skips across the melodies/ chords of the bouzouki and mandola. - Thats the other piece of advice - play along with different styles - the melody itself - then move onto counter melodies, and chordal shapes - if you know tunes then you wil know where there is a lull in some parts that the mandolin can fill in in a counter melody?
Also try an find a session with these other stringed instruments that (i find) bring out the sweet sound of the mandolin.
- am i making sense ?
Last point as mentioned previuously - if you want to get heard - youve got to have a loud instrument! youll get what you pay for!
dont give up though-if you have cds - play along to them - there are lots of great trad mandolin players..
Someone brought a mando-banjo to an oldtime session just recently. (Someone mentioned these already I think.) I'm guessing you mean a mandolin and not an octave mandolin (bouzouki, whatever). But there's a great octave mandolin player in a local irish "band" (preformance group thing).
Thisis just me but I advocate playing faster than you can on occasion. You may crash and burn but you start to break your limits and get control eventually. Nothing is worse than the cleanly plucked over studied instrument at a snails pace. Sure learn something slow, but crank up the speed sometimes, and use a thick pick to get the snap in less time. Loose yourself.
I know several awesome bluegrass mando players, but I've never heard any of them try to play a jig or hornpipe or even a real reel. They can do jaw-dropping stuff that's full of hot licks and scale-wise passages, but there's rarely any rhythmic structure to it and no lilt. That kinda stuff lends itself to speed a lot better than ITM does.
Bill Monroe started the bluegrass speed craze, but he rarely played a clean melody. The players today can play cleanly and so fast that only dogs can hear them. I just don't see the point of it.
I'm sure I meant to make a relevant point, but I dont know what it was...
I didn't mean to suggest that bluegrass players can't play decent ITM, just that the ability to play fast bluegrass doesn't guarantee it. John McGann can play dang near anything.
In my very humble opinion, there's absolutely nothing wrong with leaving notes out - as long as you do it deliberately. There's nothing to say that a variation has to be more complex than the 'orignal'.
I agree completely, Mt Goat. I think it's much better to deliberately leave out a few notes than to butcher them. I too, have struggled with the mandolin...the best thing that happened to me was getting my mandola and being completely captivated by it for months. I was so enthralled with its tone and resonance that it didn't bother me, not to be playing the melody ALL the time. I switch back and forth, between melody and back up according to what sounds best and what my limitations are. As an added bonus, after playing on the longer neck, now when I pick up the mandolin, I feel like a speed demon....and am now able to play passages that previously challenged me, with ease.
Many , many years ago when I was playing bluegrass full time, my mentor/fiddler suggested I try ITM. He said my particular style of picking was suited to it...his ear was right, but at the time, after trying ITM for a brief period, I returned to him, saying I would stick with bluegrass as that ITM stuff was too damn fast , lol. (I was trying to play ALL of the notes!)
Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
This is a follow up to the earlier thread. While I really love mandolin, I find that playing it at sessions so difficult that I'm giving some thought to starting a new instrument instead. It is incredibly hard. Speed is an issue. Volume is an issue.
But even more importantly -- for me anyway -- has been the lack of any real peers. You can always find a whistle, flute or fiddle player with more experience at sessions than you. It's HARD to find a mando player that can help you. The fiddle players think you're from mars but don't mind because you can't be heard anyway. The zouk players think you should just give up on the melody and join them.
So you go looking for good instructional material. It's hard to find Irish mandolin books. There are a few, but they're just ok. And learning to play from the books gives you only just so much.
The real issue is that regardless of the exceptions, mandolin as a session component is a fairly rare thing.
Enough whining.
Has anyone else felt this way about mando? Did you switch to something else? I want to play the melodies. Should I just tough it out for a couple more years and hope for the best? Should I dive into flute or something (I'm not a huge fan of fiddle)?
Looking for some feedback from someone whose been there.
Best,
Keyton
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by keytonw
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
No no no!
Stick with it Keyton!
Have you tried the Slow sessions at Meehans Ale House?
(search the session listings)
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Bren
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
My solution? Bit of a cop-out really. Get a nice short-scale tenor banjo; play it at sessions when you need to be heard. But stick with the mando "indoors". Personally I prefer playing the mandolin/octave mandolin when I'm not in company. But the banjo does the trick outdoors.
Alternatively, develop Dan Beimborn's style ... the man can make his mando heard over just about any other instruments in the rowdiest session!
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Aidan Crossey
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Or Bren's other solution ... get yourself a nice resonator mando!!
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Aidan Crossey
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
I don't know if George Norman is still in the Athens/Atlanta area, but if you can find him he's a really good mando player. Ask around the sessions. Somebody will know him.
Bob
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Bob himself
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Come visit us in San Francisco. This town is lousy with mandos. I attended a David Grisman workshop at a local music store and there were big, old Sonoma mountainmen toting around these beautifully cherished mandos, young punk kids with mandos covered in local band stickers and duct-tape, long-haired types with the family hobby mando for the night, people like me with midlife crisis mandos like mine...it was a mando mayhem. And, though not in the ITM category, San Francisco also boasts of a geniune mandolin orchestra that gathers together yearly at the Slavonic Cultural Center and plays the lovely, old, and tremulous European tunes.
After deciding on th mandolin for some very unsound reasons, I joined a little group for weekly practice and was feeling pretty smug to be the only mando until another walked in, and another behind her, and one more that just moved to the area from Boston behind him. Sometimes, we got nothing but mandos, and I was thinking of moving on just so I could bring something new to the party. And I contrinue to struggle with speed.
For the times when I want volume, I purchased a mando-banjo. Played it in outdoor setting on the docks of Angel Island and people coming in on the Ferry said that they heard it a good distance out on the water.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by SanFranMando
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
But I thought this thread was about ITM on the mandolin... not "dawg music"... anyway... If you want to hear the best of what San Francisco has in the way of ITM on mandolin -- come to the session at the Plough when Marla Fibish is host -- you won't be disappointed.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Phantom Button
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
I can't see how speed could possibly an issue. Bluesgrass players regularly attain speeds that leave ITM in the dust--up over 200 bpm. The 115-125 bpm of a reel in session should be attainable.
Hell, I've only been playing mandolin a few months, and I can lock into a groove at 80 and feel quite comfortable.
~~~
Have you paid attention to your picking? Bad habits here can slow things down. It's a perennial on the mandolin Cafe, but here's a thread I started a while back.
http://www.mandolincafe.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?s=b7f21ec0a8dd88bc3164723816dc634b;act=ST;f=5;t=18311;hl=pick+direction
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by s1m0n
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
It's fairly easy to attain speed if you're not playing the right rhythm. Attaining speed and making it sound bouncy is quite difficult on mando, especially when you're playing with flute/fiddle players who are speed freaks and who couldn't give a toss about their rhythm.
Stop worrying about your speed. I gave up playing tunes on mando a while back because I wasn't progressing fast enough and I'm impatient. I took up the concertina and couldn't believe how easy it was to play *any* tune, so it meant I could just get on with learning the tunes. I secretly thought "so this is why everyone else seems to find this music so much easier than I do!". There are some brilliant and very quick mando players around, but there's no getting away from it, it's physically harder to play tunes on than flute/fiddle/box etc, and anyone who tells you otherwise is bullsh*tting you because in order to achieve volume/speed you have to be relaxed and have good picking technique. On any other instrument, you can achieve speed whatever, even if you're sh*te.
Look at it this way, in order to pick every note and make each note sound clean with good tone, your hand and pick have to travel a certain distance across the strings just to make a sound right? With a fiddle you're drawing the bow across the strings so you can slur 2 or more notes together. With a box or concertina, your fingers can be hovering over the next few notes ready to press down. Same with the flute - your fingers don't have to be very far away. That's why it's easy to play faster. Here's my advice: you don't have to decide to "give up" the mando completely. Why don't you try out another instrument, and once you discover that you don't have to struggle with tunes anymore, learn heaps of tunes and then come back to your mando and see if you can work on your picking, and only then decide if you want to continue. If you're not keen on fiddle, I'd recommend starting with a whistle and then go on to try flute once you have good technique. It's no coincidence that every young tradkid in Ireland starts out on whistle.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Dow
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Simon, you were talking about speed and bluegrass players . . . well I was talking to a friend of mine today about exactly the same issue . . and he told me the father of bluegrass mandolin player Bill Monroe , once addmited that when he played a tune he often missed out some of the notes in a tune . . . because they were "passing notes", and it didn't matter to the tune if he played them or not and thats why he appears to play so fast .
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Justintime
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Don't mind Sean O Riada. Somebody conscientious enough to consider giving up the mandolin is just the sort of person that *should* be playing it.
During my 10 years or so of playing the mandolin, I haven't come upon all that many other mandolin players. I've picked up bits of technique and style from banjo players (I've taken my mandolin along to a couple of banjo classes), but I've learned the most just by trying to play what the fiddlers, pipers, flute players and box players play. I also play the whistle, which gives me another perspective on the tunes, some of which, I like to think, comes back into my mandolin playing.
Since you play the fiddle, you are already halfway - or some of the way, at least - to playing mandolin. I've been trying to learn the fiddle for about the past year and I suspect you will have an easier time learning to se a pick than I am having learning to tame the horse's tail. I wouldn't worry too much about speed - you can play at home until you feel you can keep up with a session. I admit, even after a decade, I still have problems keeping up with some sessions. I am prepared to accept that I have a certain speed ceiling (I would never make a bluegrass player), but I like the sound I make - some of it, anyway.
Don't think that, because you don't feel like you're making progress, that you should give up. Allow yourself to learn at your own pace. One advantage of not having other mandolin players around is that there is no-one for you not to measure up to.
Don't give up.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by ragaman
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Sorry, keytonw. I was getting you confused with someone else - you don't play the fiddle after all. Anyway, most of the above still applies.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by ragaman
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Thank you for your generous welcome, Mr Gilder. I have attended many of those sessions at the Plough and Stars as an observer. Indeed, I know some of the regular mandolin players at the Plough and have found them to be an excellent source of support, advice, and encouragement. Including Marla.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by SanFranMando
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
It was only your pre-session contract he/she (?) had a problem with, Jack. That clause 2.11 that says "no wrong notes are to be played under any circumstances; wrong notes are to be punished by death".
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Dow
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Dow, what's a "pre-session contract"? Do you have these at your sessions? Does anyone actually sign them? I'm afraid to even ask what they might say.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Phantom Button
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Ours only says: "staying out for drinks afterwards is compulsory".
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Dow
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Very very easy to reach great speed on a plucked instrument if you do everything wrong and forget about timing and the certain flow to the tunes that makeTraditional Irish Music what it is.
Don't give it up, get in with a live band and you will be rewarded on that level. Joe Foley in Dublin makes mandolins and trust me on this one, you can hear these a lot better that the norm, They are hand made, expensive but beautiful instruments and a hell of a lot better than the so called vintage ones knocking around or at least thats my opinion ( and many others) maybe in time you could aim to get one.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by compaqjohn
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Please stick with it!
The mandolin is a great instrument, and one of my friends, who incidentally introduced me to this site, Paul Moclair, plays mandolin. Even when tunes became difficult he stuck with it, and the thing to remember is that if another musician REALLY wants to play with you, they will!
They'll take you through YOUR favourite tunes, and your confidence will grow.
I must address Dow and comments! How can you write about flute players so? That's just total bolleaux!
If you know anything about flute, air pressure, lip tension, angle of head and/or head joint [ let alone that word embouchure - to name but a few requirements integral to flute playing!!!] all come into the equation, and that's equally as important for slow airs as for reels.
EVERY NOTE HAS TO SOUND! WHATEVER THE INSTRUMENT!
So don't be sucked into the idea that some instruments are easier on which to find notes. Real players play every note!
Keep with it, keep it up, and good luck!
Brianx
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by briantheflute
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Sorry!
I should have mentioned the following...
....deciding on whether or not to play a
cut
tip
mordent
double mordent
triplet
untongued triplet
tongued AND fingered triplet
tongued or untongued roll
triple tongued roll
triple UNtongued roll (now that IS a nice ornament)
crann AND ALL ITS VARIATIONS
slurred notes
hooded notes
bent notes
oh!...possibly some of the notes of the tune...how could I forget???
That's a little bit of what goes through a flute player's mind ( alright! My mind!) when I'm playing in a session. Wait till you find out if there's a gig / concert when you have to play VERY WELL!
Every one of these techniques requires so many subtle variations in approach to the instrument.
Dow, do you really think flute players just drop their fingers onto a hole?
Maybe concertinas are just a bit of the "OLD PULL AND PUSH"?
If you are Australian "Will you please explain?"
Bx
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by briantheflute
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
More like "OLD IN AND OUT" actually.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Phantom Button
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
You can take up the fiddle, some of us have. It's not such a great departure, the tuning's the same - and you can play tunes a lot faster on the fiddle. You don't need to give up the mandolin in any case. I haven't.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Cath
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
PULL and PUSH? IN and OUT?
Blimey, no wonder I was getting nowhere.
Think I'll stick to Mandolin.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Gael Force
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Yeah, and if you take up the fiddle, you CAN leave notes out ... nobody ever notices in a session
And personally I like the style of flute-playing where you can hear the player breathing, rather than sounding like they're hooked up to an air compressor ... that's what pipes are for
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Just a person
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Thank you all. I appreciate the support and comments from everyone. I doubt I will give up. It just gets frustrating sometimes. I'm glad that others have felt the same.
I'm glad too to hear that getting the feel right is SUPPOSED to slow you down a bit. I'd seen that and wondered what my problem was. I am pretty quick with the straight-played bluegrass tunes (alas, it's much easier to find a supportive bluegrass jam than it is to find a supporting ITM session here in the South). I started back at ITM and focused on getting the sound right and BOOM the speed dropped like a stone.
But it's getting better.
I've got the Foinn Session stuff coming to start working with that. and then I'm going back to the sessions.
Take care everyone!
Keyton
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by keytonw
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Err, all I said was that if you play the flute then your fingers hang above the notes, as opposed to having to move your arm to cover the hole. Um, don't they? At least that's what the flute players in Sydney do, maybe you like to hold it differently. I didn't say that it was any easier to become a good flute player than any other instrument. Any instrument has its technical difficulties obviously. I just think that mando is more of a struggle *at first* than other instruments for tune playing. I can say that cuz I've tried both - mando and non-mando. It's not like you have to take a new breath for every note on the flute is it? With flute - one breath = lots of notes in a long phrase. With fiddle - one bow stroke = lots of notes. With mando, one down or upstroke = one note. That's all I'm trying to say.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Dow
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
More or less, Dow. However, you can also play two or three short notes with one stroke on the mandolin as well. At least, I do. It's a sort of "hammer on" or "pull off" effect. You can also introduce cuts etc. Of course, this has to be appropriate to the tune.
I agree, though, that you can do a lot more with one bow stroke on the fiddle.
Actually, at the beginner's stage, I think the mandolin is easier but no one is playing really fast at that stage anyway. Then (as I said elsewhere), it gets easier for flute and fiddle players and harder work on the mandolin. It is achievable though.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Johannes J
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Yeah it's the speed thing. I have a lot of admiration for people who stick at it and who can pull off difficult tunes at speed and loud volume with clean sounding triplets. Maybe it's either something you take to or not. I just found tune playing at speed whilst maintaining good rhythm, tone and relaxation a difficult thing to achieve. Taking up the concertina was like a breath of fresh air - playing tunes suddenly became effortless and all I had to concentrate on was improving technique and learning more tunes, instead of constantly feeling as though I was struggling. I really felt for keytonw when I read his 1st post.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Dow
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
As a flute player who also plays a bit of mandolin, I'd say that the mandolin is a lot easier to 'get off the ground' than the flute. It is difficult for a clumsy person like me to play the thing fast and accurately, but I found it easier to learn tunes on because you can see the patterns your fingers make, which reinforces the other ways in which you pick up the tune. I'd always considered Whistles and Mandolins as being particularly 'fast instruments', but maybe that is because I know some very fast players of those instruments. I particularly like playing the mando as a change from the flute because it is NOT up against my face, and that distance is refreshing and feels quite liberating, but I do feel that it lacks the subtlety and range of possibilities of the flute or fiddle, but if you can get into combining chords and melody, and bending those fiddly little pairs of strings, it can be very expressive (I hasten to add that I'm not at that level myself).
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Ottery
Dont give up
I started as a mandolin player, but ended up hating the instrument as it was constaty going out of tune, I could never hear myself, and also wasn't abe to get the sound I wanted.
All the nicer sounds were coming from the other guys in the sessions!
I then got a banjo and moved on to bouzouki and other stringed instruments, but it wasnt until I actually played with the afformentioned Joe Foley and Tom Walsh in Dublin that I started enjoying the mandolin again.
Because in one of these sessions there are not that many players there(early on) and you can hear the mandolin - thats something to consider - maybe you should find a session with less musicians, or get someone to duo with..
the other thing about Joe's session, is that he plays bouzouki - hes good at it and Tom plays Mandola and hes good at that - its usually audible tasterful trad. I can really hear the mandolin, cause it skips across the melodies/ chords of the bouzouki and mandola. - Thats the other piece of advice - play along with different styles - the melody itself - then move onto counter melodies, and chordal shapes - if you know tunes then you wil know where there is a lull in some parts that the mandolin can fill in in a counter melody?
Also try an find a session with these other stringed instruments that (i find) bring out the sweet sound of the mandolin.
- am i making sense ?
Last point as mentioned previuously - if you want to get heard - youve got to have a loud instrument! youll get what you pay for!
dont give up though-if you have cds - play along to them - there are lots of great trad mandolin players..
GOOD LUCK AND ENJOYI T!
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Hugo Chavez
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Someone brought a mando-banjo to an oldtime session just recently. (Someone mentioned these already I think.) I'm guessing you mean a mandolin and not an octave mandolin (bouzouki, whatever). But there's a great octave mandolin player in a local irish "band" (preformance group thing).
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Emily Horne
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Don't care about a mando but I'm looking for a left handed metal flute anybody got any clues where I might find one?
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by maritom
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Get a right-handed one and play it behind your head.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Gael Force
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Thisis just me but I advocate playing faster than you can on occasion. You may crash and burn but you start to break your limits and get control eventually. Nothing is worse than the cleanly plucked over studied instrument at a snails pace. Sure learn something slow, but crank up the speed sometimes, and use a thick pick to get the snap in less time. Loose yourself.
Salt
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by saltcast
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
I know several awesome bluegrass mando players, but I've never heard any of them try to play a jig or hornpipe or even a real reel. They can do jaw-dropping stuff that's full of hot licks and scale-wise passages, but there's rarely any rhythmic structure to it and no lilt. That kinda stuff lends itself to speed a lot better than ITM does.
Bill Monroe started the bluegrass speed craze, but he rarely played a clean melody. The players today can play cleanly and so fast that only dogs can hear them. I just don't see the point of it.
I'm sure I meant to make a relevant point, but I dont know what it was...
Bob
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by Bob himself
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
John McGann played some great mandolin with "Airplang" Rodney Millers band.He can do the bluegrass and Irish styles no problem.
# Posted on January 5th 2005 by tirvaluk
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
I didn't mean to suggest that bluegrass players can't play decent ITM, just that the ability to play fast bluegrass doesn't guarantee it. John McGann can play dang near anything.
Bob
# Posted on January 6th 2005 by Bob himself
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
In my very humble opinion, there's absolutely nothing wrong with leaving notes out - as long as you do it deliberately. There's nothing to say that a variation has to be more complex than the 'orignal'.
# Posted on January 6th 2005 by ragaman
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
I agree completely, Mt Goat. I think it's much better to deliberately leave out a few notes than to butcher them. I too, have struggled with the mandolin...the best thing that happened to me was getting my mandola and being completely captivated by it for months. I was so enthralled with its tone and resonance that it didn't bother me, not to be playing the melody ALL the time. I switch back and forth, between melody and back up according to what sounds best and what my limitations are. As an added bonus, after playing on the longer neck, now when I pick up the mandolin, I feel like a speed demon....and am now able to play passages that previously challenged me, with ease.
Many , many years ago when I was playing bluegrass full time, my mentor/fiddler suggested I try ITM. He said my particular style of picking was suited to it...his ear was right, but at the time, after trying ITM for a brief period, I returned to him, saying I would stick with bluegrass as that ITM stuff was too damn fast , lol. (I was trying to play ALL of the notes!)
# Posted on January 6th 2005 by ketida
Re: Giving Up Mando (Possibly)
Hmmmf.
An Irtrad player accusing bluegrassers of playing with speed and repetition. Well ain't THAT like a rat callin' a fox a "long-snouted vermin!"
# Posted on January 11th 2005 by Hickory6