NEW: "GYPSY JAZZ MANDOLIN" Lessons and transcriptions 

If you are a guitarist, switching over to the mandolin is a natural. The hardest thing is the left hand fingering. On guitar, you use your pinky finger for the 5th fret notes, but on mandolin the fingering scheme is different, due to the tuning being wider between strings, and the scale length being shorter.I got advice from my fiddlin' buddies, including Michael Snow, when I started in the 1980s: 

index finger covers frets 1 and 2

second finger covers frets 3 and 4

third finger covers frets 5 and 6

fourth (pinky) covers fret 7

This, of course, only covers 'first position' but 98% of traditional music is played there, so you can obviously get a lot of music together with that fingering scheme as a foundation.

When I began to explore the mandolin, I was really attracted to the style Sam Bush played, especially his way of interpreting fiddle tunes on mandolin. Turns out Sam was a fiddler first, and applied a lot of 'fiddle vibe' to his mandolin playing.I soon found out that applying actual fiddle music to the mandolin was fairly natural, as the two instruments are tuned alike, and so the 'noting' is the same. The trick is figuring how to get your pick to sound smooth, like the bow (see Technique Tips for more on this). If you pick every note, you sound a bit like a typewriter. I read an interview with Sam where he mentioned combining slurred notes (hammer ons and pull offs) with picked notes, and this had a big effect on my direction. As I got interested in Irish music, I heard the way mandolin was played much like Irish banjo, with every note (including very fast triplets) picked.Partly to try to find an alternative sound, but to keep within the tradition, I kept the 'fiddle approach' and work in slurred notes much like a fiddler would- after all, a fiddle would sound pretty stiff if every note was played with a single bow stroke! I learned a bunch of Tommy Peoples, Andy McGann, Michael Coleman and other Irish fiddler's music on mandolin, and tried to get their smooth sound.Having an instrument with good sustain is essential.

Like most mandolinists, I spent a lot of time with (and still love) Bill Monroe's music. I felt that ground was being covered very well by many excellent players, and that 'my voice' was somewhere other than in the traditional mandolin world.I'm still searching for it...

Since you can play up to four notes at a time with conventional fingering, there are a lot of good possibilities for chord voicings.Information on basic triads is widely available, but for those of you into advanced jazz/swing type 7th chords, you may wonder how to voice extended chors, like E7 #9 b13.Isn't that a six note chord (1,3,5,b7,#9,b13)? It doesn't have to be. The trick is knowing which notes to eliminate. If you use the 3rd and 7th of the chord on the bottom two strings, believe it or not you are playing the 'basic chord sound'. Yeah, it is tricky to think of an E chord based on D in the bass (if you play the D on the 4th string, 7th fret)- but you get used to it (guitarists who use altered tunings have bigger worries). So, on strings 4 through 1, play the frets 7,6,3 and 3 and you'll have the notes D G# C G, or b7,3,b13,#9 of the E7 chord. You can apply this to many extended chord situations, on any instrument.If you are serious about playing jazz on the mandolin, you'll want to become fluent with these sounds.

Regardless of style, you'll need to be a good 'rhythm player'. The more you understand chords, the freer you will be to both play interesting, effective accompanyment and more musical soloing. See my Tips for Improvisors page for more ideas on soloing.

Ted Eschliman's jazz mando site has much more to chew on!

There are a lot of mandolins on the market today, both vintage and newly built. As always, your choices will depend on what you have access to physically and financially. Within the world of F-style and A-style instruments which have become the modern standard (as opposed to the 'bowl-back' or 'tater-bug' old-world/ classical style instruments) there are mandolins of wildly varying qualities. Some instruments are very percussive, 'woody' sounding, with little sustain. Others, which I prefer, are warm, fat and round sounding, with lots of sustain. I play a range of styles on mandolin, from bluegrass to celtic to jazz, so I need a very versatile instrument. I am not a paid endorser of J.R. Zeidler, I just find his instruments to suit my needs perfectly, and I've never had my hands on a better instrument for my tastes.

Part of the magic is having large frets and a radiused fingerboard. I can't get 'my sound' on skinny frets and a flat fingerboard; I'd love to get a vintage "A style" someday, but the first thing I'd do is have the fingerboard 'updated' to my tastes.

It's good to expose yourself to a lot of instruments (going to festivals, jam sessions, etc.) so you can learn what sounds and feels you prefer.

In a perfect world we'd be paid what we're worth, have big beautiful homes etc. Meanwhile, in this here world we sometimes have to compromise.The sound of the mandolin through a good microphone, with a good soundperson operating a good PA system in a good sounding room, is a rare, beautiful thing. When I can't have that, or I'm playing with drums in a loud rocking band (rare), I use a Fishman pickup which is custom installed into my Zeidler bridge. I run it through a Morley JD 10 preamp, into a Boss volume pedal, which has a separate pot control so I can pre-set a rhythm volume in the 'up' position, then step on the pedal to get full lead volume in the 'down' position.

I wouldn't dream of using a pickup in a 'straight ahead' bluegrass band. The blend of overtones and 'moving air' is what acoustic music is all about.

Now available from Mel Bay Publications: Winfield National Mandolin Champions, book and CD package $19.95. This includes a set of Irish reels I haven't recorded elsewhere, "The Musical Priest/Sailor On The Rock"; played on solo mandolin. Also featured are Chris Thiele, Clyde Moon, Charlie Provenza, David Peters and Matt Flinner.