Quote:
Originally Posted by Aaron Smith
I I often use the mandolin to sight-read new music, because the notes are much easier to identify on the fretted instrument, especially when you get out of the first position. Once I have the tune in my head, then I take it to the violin. I find it easier to play the violin intuitively and expressively, and easier to play the mandolin technically (if that makes any sense at all).
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I play a number of unrelated stringed instruments, and don't consider mandolin to be my number one instrument. But I, too, find it the most useful for first sight-reading through new music.
For me to use the term "sight-reading" when it comes to comprehending standard musical notation is a vast overstatement - in my case it's more like "sight-deciphering." I am by no means a fluent musical sight-reader. (Written notes look like birds on a barbed wire fence to me...)
But I'm better at it on mandolin than on any other instrument I play, so that's what I use when the need arises.
whm