Are you willing to learn, how to play the mandolin perfectly but you are not sure where to start? This blog would provide you with information on the essential things that you should know for setting you on the path to success.
The beginner mandolin must be balanced in such a manner that you do not have to face any problem while reaching any of the notes. You should keep your right hand free, enabling you to change the picking and strumming as and when necessary. The main balance points happen to be the left thumb which guides the mandolin’s neck gently upward, the diaphragm that acts as the main stabilizer and the area right below the inner half of right elbow which manages to anchor the instrument without restricting the wrist movement.
Once the mandolin has been balanced, you would need to establish a technique to make a functional pick. You simply have to curl the index finger slightly and lay the pick right across it. Then, flatten your thumb across the pick’s face, pressing it firmly against the index finger. The flat bottom half of the index finger and the thumb must remain parallel to one another as well as to the ground. While strumming chords, you would want to have a looser grip and hence let the pick to slide very smoothly across each string. You can get in touch with a mandolin teacher near me to understand its use better.
- Keep Your Focus on Accuracy:
Mandolin has four sets of dual strings and so, one would always need more amount of finger pressure than it would usually require with most of the ukuleles, guitars etc. Having said that, a quality tone depends more on how accurate you are than strength. To make sure that each doubled string give out a proper sound, it is necessary to hold the string down as close to fret wire as possible without being on top of it. The string’s point of contact to the fret wire helps in producing the pitch that one hears.
