How To Play Mandolin

Hello, my name is Mathew Forbes from The Music Workshop Company, I am going to take you through to how to tune some music instruments and how to play them basically and also how to read the notated music form. To get you started on the mandolin, I have a flat back mandolin here, you may have the near palatine ball back version, this is more flat on the body. I have it nice and cozy and close and play with the plectrum rather than fingers, and I have my wrist firmly studied on the side of the instrument, so that it's from the wrists movement that I can reach all four strings comfortably, but it's important not to put any of your hand this of the bridge, because obviously you will disturb and muffle the sound, so everything from your hand must be behind it so that the string is allowed to vibrate freely, the left hand because it is the same tuning and referencing proportions as in the violin, the general mandolin fingering is where you put your first finger, your index finger on the second thread, your second finger two fronts latter the third finger on the thread next and the fourth finger which is the seventh thread there.

If you need to reach the third fret, the one just by the first, obviously the second finger just comes back, then you can squeeze your hand a little bit tighter, generally the violin fingering of one, the second two on the fourth, three on the fifth and four on the seventh. This is standard mandolin fingering. Often mandolin players liked to use the tremolo effect and again this is, this is from the movement from their wrist, using the two strings of each pair to roll as smoothly as possible, I don't think it's good thing to practice timing your string crossing, so going from one string to another, sounds really fluent and being able to hit the two strings of each pair very accurately every time so you get that lovely mandolin course kind of effect of the two strings. .