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My girlfriend is a violinist who has been self-teaching mandolin the past couple years. So we have a very nice-sounding bowlback classical mandolin sitting in the living room which I will pick up once in a while, maybe every couple weeks. And it does seem to be coming along despite very little specific focus on it. Hereās a section of the presto from Bachās first violin sonata in G minor:
Why does this work? Well, the two instrument are certainly similar. This is especially true at the level of the motions themselves. So itās really just the size of the box and aspects of the setup that are different. In fact, when we spoke to Pietro Mazzoni in the motor learning lab at Columbia, one thing he did mention is that learned motions have the ability to scale, without necessarily re-learning the entire motion. This makes a mandolin in some respects like a tiny guitar, I think. And itās just different enough in feel to maybe cause you to do something differently than you would by hacking away at the same gear with the same form, day-in, day-out.
Thatās my hypothesis anyway!
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I like it. I have a mandolin lying around my studio room - I hacked together plausible-enough sounding mandolin parts on one my uncle bought for a recording project we were working on (that he ALSO didnāt know how to play, lol) that my dad bought me a starter mandolin for Christmas that year. Itās kind of fun - I should spend more time on it.
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And since you have purportedly a double-escape style pickstroke to begin with then maybe single-note stuff might just āworkā. Give it a shot and show us footage!
Jeez, the whole 5ths tuning thing throws me so much I;d be embarrassed to share anything just yet! Maybe Iāll start working through some of Andy Woodsā examples though - if I have a mandolin, why not?
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Cool playing! Iām going to grab some sheet music for that Bach piece!
You mentioned the great Steve Kaufman,what book of his would you recommend to someone who wanted to read about cross picking from a different authority on the subject.
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Heās got zillions of products - books, videos, you name it. Iāve only ever watched āPicking up Speedā, which is a video instructional. I re-watched parts of it again not too long ago and I donāt actually think mentions the curved trajectory of the pickstroke in that video. If you read between the lines that would have to be the case, of course, since he talks about making an intentionally large picking motion, and putting power into it. Itās kind of the exact opposite of every shred-style instructional video in that respect, which is hilarious. To be honest Iām not 100% sure heās always doing the motion correctly when he slows down and enters ādemonstration of individual pickstrokes modeā. But thatās true of many instructional videos, and probably even some of our own!
Someone emailed us a snippet from one of his books where he does specifically mention the pick trajectory. He describes it as six motions, or something to that effect. Like, phase one, you go down. Then you go across the string to play the note, the you go up. Then you reverse and do those three backwards for the upstroke. I think thatās how he describes it. I canāt seem to find the example it in our email so I canāt give you a reference for the book but itās out there somewhere!
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I play a little mandolin. I havenāt for several months (I practice more piano than anything else.) But I agree, the motions are very similar. I find it slightly more difficult to play, mainly because I donāt play it as much, so itās obviously more unfamiliar. But the double strings and tiny scale length (Iām a big guy!) make it a little more tricky. But I love it as an instrument, Sierra Hull is one of my favourite musicians so Iām very inspired by a lot of the blue grass stuff.
I actually recorded a mandolin video a few years ago. Maybe Iāll try another one at some point. I still have the magnet and the extender pads so it might be quite fun to try it!
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Nice work! Completely different technique than your shreddy stuff, and certainly different than your elbow motion. This looks to be a supinated crosspicking technique, which is what Sierra uses. Did you work on that specifically?
Speaking of rock guitar and mandolin, if you look around on youtube, there are videos of Tommy Shaw and Jack Blades performing gigs under the banner āShaw Bladesā that include Damn Yankees songs arranged for acoustic guitar and mandolin.
Thank you!
Yes I did, I watched most of your cross picking videos and got a decent grasp on it. Iām still kind of slow, and itās not something Iāve worked on that recently.
I recorded a few Neo classical cross picking examples at the start of this year for guitar. If you search āCrosspicking Chopinā thereās a few examples of me doing this, with magnet, on guitar, if youāre interested!
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