new Mandolin Player checking in I have been playing about 3 months and love'n it right after get my cheep little mandolin I had a accident and took most of the tip of my first finger off. Now me being the hard head that I am was not going to put it away till I was healed up. I used my three good fingers to start learning to play. Ya got to love two and three finger chords.

If anyone is inserted I do have some links for free tabs. I will gladly share

Hi Bill,

That clip 'Kitchen Sessions 3' is also on the .mp3 player on my home page near the bottom of the list of tunes I have uploaded to my page.

Robin

I used to play dulcimer regularly with a mandolin playera couple of years ago. The two instrumentsgo together well as long as you think about the arangements you are going to use. To get over the 'volume' issue I played in noter drone style and that gave me the punch to keep up with mandolin. I've just had a look through my sound files to see if I had any recordings and I've found one of me on dulcimer in d,d,d,d tuning and Chris on mandola rather than mandolin - We are just jamming around with an old Welsh tune but you'll get the idea of how we arranged for the two instruments:

I use finger picks on the 12 string, and my dulcimers, but bare fingers on nylon stringed guitars, and my banjo. On the steel six strings, I sometimes use finger picks, sometimes not. Depends more on whether Mrs.Wanda is asleep than anything else. I play cleaner with picks on the doubled strings. Is the mandolin neck that thin? With 10 strings crowded in together, the Tiple felt pretty narrow, but I think it was the same width as his two ukulele. The 12 string, on the other hand, has room to land an airplane on the fret board. We learn what we practice, try it and see.

Paul

Paul, I assume you use fingerpicks when you fingerpick a 12-string guitar, correct?

One problem fingerpicking a mandolin is that the strings are so darn close together. The fretboard is more narrow than most soprano ukulele fretboards, for example. The right hand fingers would be really scrunched together. And the strings are really taught, much more so than guitar or ukulele strings (the latter of which are usually nylon as well).

I think it is theoretically possible to fingerpick a mandolin, but it would be pretty difficult in practice. A mandola might be more "doable."

Paul Certo said:

I don't play mandolin, but I finger pick everything else I play, even 12 string guitars, and my friends 8 string uke and 10 string tiple. Tiples have 4 courses tuned like a uke. Two courses are paired strings, and two are tripled strings. I don'r see a reason you couldn't fingerpick a mandolin, but I don't recall seeing anyone do it. Start a new trend.

Paul

Nathaniel, I don't know of anyone who fingerpicks the mandolin. Crosspicking is common, but fingerpicking, not. There are several physical impediments to fingerpicking the mandolin: the strings are really close together, the strings are reallytaught, and all the courses have double strings. If it could be done, it would be with metal fingerpicks. But I've never heard ofit.Every style of mandolin that I've heard of involves a flat pick.

Nathaniel Jared Smith said:

A guitar player, I took a detour for a few years and played the mandolin. But that was beforeI discovered the dulcimer. Now when I jam with friends I bring my guitar and a couple of dulcimers, but not usually the mandolin. The main issue with the mandolin, I think, is that it can be very loud, so you have to consciously play softly so as not to drown out the other musicians (don't worry about the fiddle and dobro players, though). I love the mandolin on fiddle tunes, of course, but I also just like to play chords and add short little filler runs every now and then. The rhythmic potential of the mandolin is great, although I can attain almost the same effect with my 6-string baritone dulcimette.

I assume you know the David Schnaufer/Butch Baldassari album Appalachian Mandolin & Dulcimer. If not, you have a big treat waiting for you . . .

I played 2 finger chords (sometimes the wrong chords) on mandolin in the vid below, in an informal jam with 6 dulci players, another mandolin on melody and a guitar on melody every other verse. It's kind of nice to switch out the lead melody player, not only the person but other instruments. 2 finger chords rock

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JmFtNOIT56w

http://mountaindulcimer.ning.com/group/rockininthefreeworld/forum/topics/ashokan-farewell-jam

Iplayed MandolinuntilI damaged a finger on my left hand that meansI can no longer play 4 finger closed chords (Bluegrass style mandolin adds "percussion" to the ensemble using closed chords when not playing melody). I can still play melody to some extent; tunes range from Bluegrass or Old Time to Scottish or Irish Folk (Iwent to universityin Glasgow in the Folk Revival of the sixties, when I had pretensions to become a banjo player) Nowadays, it's Soldier's Joy to Wha' Saw the 42nd via Doon In The Wee Room, or Over The Waterfall. I now play a guitar bodied bouzouki, tuned GDAE, which I can do 2 fingered (it's amazing how many 2 fingered open chords there are and how effective they can be). Theoretically I play in what you might call a 'Garage band' but we meet on a boat about twice a year, so usually I strum unaccompanied; anything from City of New Orleans to Norwegian Wood, via (Dublin in) The Rare Ould Times, The Gresham Disaster, or Sinking of the Reuben James/Wildwood Flower. I have absolutely no idea where I am going to find folks with whom to join in on dulcimer. I will have to persuade my 'boat band' to play more Joni Mitchell!