Mandolin/Fiddle

[Jack Macleod]

Are these two instruments played "similarly"...barring the obvious differences...

Does the fretboard of the mando 'mimic' the neck of the fiddle? I heard one very prominent piper tell me the instruments were virtually twins 'twer it not for the bow of the fiddle and dual strings of the mandolin.

[Jack]

Fiddle is a lot harder to play.

[dubhlinn]

Are these two instruments played "similarly"...barring the obvious differences...

Does the fretboard of the mando 'mimic' the neck of the fiddle? I heard one very prominent piper tell me the instruments were virtually twins 'twer it not for the bow of the fiddle and dual strings of the mandolin.

Both instruments are tuned in the same way making the left hand work - fingering scales and chords - the same on both.
Virtually all fiddle players will have a mandolin lying around somewhere but mandoline players are not to keen on fiddle playing,they find the bow to be a problem after getting used to a plectrum.

Slan,
D.

[talasiga]

Hmmm .... can we mayhaps say this is analagous to the whistle and flute -
same fingering but the the whistle's plectrum is the fipple and the flute has her emBOWchure? See?

No, its not so silly because all flautists can generally play the whistles but not vice versa.

I'll be back later .....

[JS]

Fair enough, but as a fiddler with a mando lying around somewhere, and as a hanger-out with a number of mando players, I'd say that the right hand on the mando involves particular challenges of its own, if not the immediate problems of tone production that a new fiddler faces. Once you get the bowing in place, the fiddle offers lots of agility and speed that are pretty hard to come by on the mando without lots and lots of practice.

JS

[Wombat]

Fair enough, but as a fiddler with a mando lying around somewhere, and as a hanger-out with a number of mando players, I'd say that the right hand on the mando involves particular challenges of its own, if not the immediate problems of tone production that a new fiddler faces. Once you get the bowing in place, the fiddle offers lots of agility and speed that are pretty hard to come by on the mando without lots and lots of practice.

JS

Absolutely. I came to mando from guitar and bouzouki and although the left hand requirements weren't a major challenge the right hand reprogramming was considerable. The relative lack of sustain is offputting; you have to embrace it as a feature of the instrument rather than a drawback and use it to your advantage.

[Martin Milner]

In the realm of ITM, both mandolin and violin play melody, and tunes learnt on the mando can corss over the violin with relative ease (relative to taking a whistle tune onto the whistle).

I started playing the mando a few years ago, but found that I couldn't hear myself, due to a quiet mando in a noisy setting. I switched to fiddle in a year or two, and wouldn't consider switching back. I had played violin as a child, and this undoubtedly helped me in spades. In fact I only considered mando as I was already familiar with the tuning pattern.

I found mando a lot harder to tune, and keep in tune, than a fiddle.

[JimmyCarbomb]

The best part is that the mandolin or bouzouki, when played in harmony with the fiddle, is one of the greatest sounds in Celtic music! When the jigs and reels are played in unison, it's truly a thing of beauty.

Will I ever see our fiddler and our mandolin player trade instruments during a gig? Nope. There's just that little change in the bow-to-finger mechanics that will make that too confusing. I would love to see it though!

[Guest]

Are these two instruments played "similarly"...barring the obvious differences...

Does the fretboard of the mando 'mimic' the neck of the fiddle? I heard one very prominent piper tell me the instruments were virtually twins 'twer it not for the bow of the fiddle and dual strings of the mandolin.

Yes it does.

But as noted above, the bowing can be a bit of a hurdle esp for folks who want to learn in sessions.

Best advice I have, get a 'Suzuki' Violin teacher and get at least books 1 and 2 of Suzuki. You might also like to save or plan for getting something like (USA)Samuel Applebaum's 'String Builder' esp Bk 2 and 1 if you'd like insurance...But a metronome is almost mandatory no matter which books you select.

All of the above is to get basic 'Bow' training.

For Irtrad today there is no one best book but the most useful out there are 1 Kevin Burke's DVD - OR - Video No 1, published by Homespun here in the USA. Buying the second one would not be much use to a beginner so leave that for later - BTW it is very very good but not appropriate for a novice. Also essential today is Matt Cranitch's one and only Book/CD 'The Irish Fiddle Book' pub by Waltons of Dublin Ireland. Again it won't be any use to the student for several months but the fiddling is SUPERB! I bought the accompanying CDs by accident before I got the book and they contain some of the best Irtrad I have ever heard on fiddle! These CDs are OC not the one with the book, the are 'Take A Bow', and, 'Give It Schtick' - publisher Ossian Publications Cork Ireland. Let me add here that Matt's book assumes you have already done a lot of work on your bowing, and gives you lots of drills to improve on it. It does not nor would it be fair to expect kindergarten lessons which you must get from Suzuki, or similar.

Other books out there I like - though not as much OC - are Paul Mc Nevin both 'The Irish Fiddle' + CD, published by Waltons - as well as his other tome '110 Irish Fiddle Tunes' ( with guitar chording on the tab! )+ CDs; however I would not recommend these two alone, if you get em be warned Paul is a maestro on the bow and his settings reflect the very high skill he illustrates! But the 110 slowed tunes on the CDs are great to play along with.

There are other videos/DVDs books out there, eg by the Lennons ( Co Leitrim ) again published by Waltons but I have not seen/read reviewed them, but I bet great value.

Books/CDs/DVDs that you want to avoid, at least for the first bout of schooling in Irtrad include Peter Cooper's 'Complete Irish -ripoff?-..' . The bowings work but only if you want to sound like an English folk fiddler tying to sound like dead Irish fidders. Compare to British Blues tutors of the 60's -90's ie John Mayal does Robert Johnston - if you like that kind of thing that is. Also out there is a book by one John? Berthoud which I am told is a riot - not so much that the settings are accurate - they aren't - but they sound so silly. Again totaly unIrish and OC in this case highly influenced by English / African folk music.

I can't emphasise enough the fact that you cannot substitute tuition from a native who grew up IN the tradition, and if you can't get that then Matt Cranitch's book is about as good as you can get today.

[meemtp]

Some fiddle.mando players have no problem whatsoever switch hitting. Eamon Coyne's been to our session a few times and went back and forth on both. Quite mightily I might add. He even had a few tunes on someone's tenor banjo, an instrument that he doesn't spend a lot of time with (he's the "other" Eamon Coyne, brother of Mick and Terry as opposed to "younger", "banjo" Eamonn Coyne).

[Rick C.]

Just about any tune that lays out well on fiddle will do the same on mando, so yeah.

One thing you should know though is that mandolin is generally considered a transitional instrument and doesn't carry the same weight as fiddle, box, flute, pipes, etc. At least that's true in the U.S. And even the loudest mandolin (I have a pretty loud one!) will drown in a session of any size.

The instrument works well in a band setting, but I've noticed over the years that many mandolin players are also newcomers to the music and may not be aware of the nuances and inflections of the rhythm-- so their playing ends up sounding very "square", even though the notes may be right. That's easily enough remedied, but it makes the music sound like Old Time or Bluegrass if gone unchecked.


Cheers,



Rick