Playing the Mandolin

Yesterday at band practice I gathered with the three fiddlers, and we waited. We knew the accordion player wasn’t coming, but we were expecting our fearless leader, the guitarist, who keeps the rhythm. Finally one fiddler called her, and she had lost track of time. Meanwhile, I tried to keep the rhythm while the fiddles played the melody. Since I come from a background as a fiddler myself, I first started playing the mandolin as a melody instrument, but it was hard to keep up with the agile fiddles. This was back in 2001, and I quickly figured out how to play simpler harmonies. Somewhere along the way I finally figured out how to play chords – seriously, nobody showed me, I just finally got it one day. But I wasn’t playing straight chords to keep time like the guitar; I was playing all sorts of backbeats or interesting rhythms. It took me a few minutes to stop doing that, because it really threw the fiddles, but eventually I was just playing straight chords to keep time. And do you know, we didn’t sound half bad even without any other rhythm instrument. That is one thing about the mandolin – it has made me more versatile as a musician. As a fiddler, would I have ever learned that I have an ear for playing harmonies? Maybe, but I almost certainly wouldn’t have learned to play chords. Now I can do it all – even play fiddle, and I have, but not lately. With three actual fiddlers in the band, the odds that they would need me to pick up my violin have fallen to statistically nothing. Maybe it’s time to find another mariachi band to join…

Another thing about the mandolin is that it attracts a lot more attention than a violin. Hardingfele and I walked to band practice after work yesterday, since it was such a beautiful day, and we stopped into the ZuZu Café for a quick rosewater lemonade. The people who worked there were very interested in my mandolin, but they didn’t even give Hardingfele’s violin a second look. I’m not even sure if they noticed her violin case, but the mandolin case is hard to miss. They had to know what was in there, so I took it out and showed them, and then they raved about how beautiful it is, and how well-made, and how it is clearly very old and valuable. Truly, you don’t see something like my mandolin every day! Unless you are me, because I see it every day. Do I practice every day? No comment…

Famous Hat