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  #16  
Old 10-17-2018, 11:04 AM
fatt-dad fatt-dad is offline
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you may also get ideas from Rich DelGrosso.

http://www.mandolinblues.com/

I use a capo when playing classical music, so the bluegrass folks are nowhere to be found.

f-d
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  #17  
Old 10-21-2018, 07:42 AM
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Rumblefish Rumblefish is offline
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You really just need to do a bunch of jamming in E. There’s plenty of room to have fun. Concentrate on closed position licks. There are some basic patterns that you just move up and down the neck when you change keys.

Plus one on Jim Richters website. He adapts a ton of songs to mandolin and his videos are very approachable. So is Jim for that matter. He’s an old friend of mine and he started as a Blues guitarist. I used to play in a blues band with him and he’s an excellent guitarist. When he first picked up the mandolin it was to play Blues and he’s from southern Indiana where Yank Rachel is from and there’s that influence in his playing.
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  #18  
Old 10-21-2018, 10:56 AM
Steve DeRosa Steve DeRosa is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Jelly View Post
...Could they detune or get a bigger mandolin and detune?...
The late Tommy Tedesco - guitarist extraordinaire and first-call member of the legendary Wrecking Crew - built a successful career as a multi-instrumentalist by adapting his instruments to variations of guitar tuning, in order to avoid using different fingering patterns in a high-pressure studio environment; truth is, it works - you've undoubtedly heard his work on hundreds of recordings from the '60s-70s and never known the difference - and if you have the ability to do a little bit of mental transposition, you can open up a whole new world of tone color with a minimum of work...

My thoughts:
  • Restring a mandolin to accommodate DGBE tuning, an octave above the top four strings of a guitar: while this would be the easiest way to go in terms of fingerings, you're losing a fifth at the bottom end; if you want the mandolin to pick up where the guitar leaves off with little overlap this may not matter to you, and the added brightness will definitely help you cut through
  • Restring a mandolin to accommodate ADF#B uke "D" tuning: another one that'll allow you to use guitar fingerings but you'll need to mentally transpose to A (think a guitar capoed at the seventh fret); shouldn't be a problem - you're in another "guitar-friendly" key - and since you're only losing one whole step on the low end (you're using a low A rather than the re-entrant uke tuning) this one will probably sound closest to a traditional mandolin tonality
  • Restring a mandola to DGBE guitar tuning: the larger, longer-scale relative of the mandolin, this one will give you mandolin-family tone color in the same range as the guitar - which may or not be a problem depending on what you're after; if you're adventurous you might want to restring the D and G strings (possibly the B as well) in octaves - which will also allow you to cross genres with bouzouki-like textures
Be aware that you'll need custom-gauge sets for all of these - I'd recommend buying bulk loop-end strings in appropriate gauges from one of the dedicated string dealers like JustStrings.com - as well as a specific setup for the strings/tuning you choose; speaking as one who uses dedicated tunings on both tenor (GCEA "drop-G" tenor uke) and 5-string (gDGBE "highgrass") banjo, IME it's well worth it - and as I said, your audience will never know the difference...
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  #19  
Old 10-21-2018, 01:10 PM
frankmcr frankmcr is offline
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Tommy Tedesco's string gauges for mandolin tuned DGBE low-high:

.024 - .017 - .012 - .009

Relevant page from Tommy's book For Guitar Players Only:

https://books.google.com/books?id=1k...page&q&f=false
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Old 10-21-2018, 01:46 PM
Steve DeRosa Steve DeRosa is offline
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Thanks, Frank...
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  #21  
Old 10-24-2018, 09:02 PM
Wade Hampton Wade Hampton is offline
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Steve, I understand the utilitarian practicality behind tuning a mandolin like the first four strings of a guitar, but not only does that cut off some of the range of the standard tuning, it also alters the tone of the instrument. It loses some sparkle, it loses some lower end response, and basically it just kind of lays down and don't want to get up.

When you do that to a mandolin, you basically turn it into a crappy little guitar.

The fifth interval tuning is very much a part of the sound of the mandolin, and it has huge practical advantages, as well: it's so easy to find melodies and harmonies on it. Using a modified fourth interval tuning like the first four strings of a guitar really gives you the worst of both worlds.

Again, I understand the advantages that doing that gave an in-demand recording session pro like Tommy Tedesco. But let's face it, very few of us constantly get called for sessions like that, and towards the end of his career even Tedesco got fewer and fewer session calls, as the recording industry changed radically.

But in a home and local performing musician situation, there's really no reason not to learn the mandolin using the actual mandolin tuning. Of all the stringed instruments I play, I find that the mandolin is the easiest to find my way around on. The most difficult thing about mandolin is keeping the thing in perfect tune! The notes, scales and chord patterns on it certainly aren't very demanding.


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