Hello and welcome to the first blog introduction to my In-depth project for 2022! This post will go over the main parts of my project plan. This will help guide me through my learning so I am able to improve my skills throughout the time

What?

For my in-depth this year I have decided to learn how to play the mandolin. The mandolin is a stringed instrument that is commonly heard the most in different kinds of classical and folk music. The mandolin I will be learning is an eight-string instrument but has only four notes in double-stringed pairs to create the mandolin’s signature sound.

Here is a picture of my mandolin:

There are three main focuses I have for my project. The first skill I want to learn is chords and strumming. I have experience with this in guitar, but the chord shapes and strumming will be different on the mandolin. This skill will help me memorize the place of the strings and the size of the fretboard by touch while I am doing a familiar skill. Another skill I want to learn on the mandolin is picking. There are two main ways of picking that are used separately and sometimes even together. The first is picking with a guitar pick. I am more familiar with this because I use a pick for most of my guitar playing. I will still be learning this skill though because the mandolin is a different size than what I am used to on the guitar as well as having double strings. The other form of picking is hand-picking. I have tried this much less on the guitar than the other style, so I am excited to learn this from scratch. This will be one of the skills I hope to improve on the most from the start of this project to the end. It offers a special challenge being something I am completely new to and having a new kind of string layout. The fact that the instrument has double strings helps it sound so beautiful, but I think this will make picking more complicated because I must hit both strings to play the note. The last mandolin part I want to learn is not a hands-on skill. For this project, I am interested in learning as much as I can about the mandolin, and I think the best way I can do that is by learning and listening to music made for the instrument. I hope to expand my music taste by researching songs that highlight the instrument. Doing this will help me learn more about the mandolin and motivate me to learn new songs and skills.

Why?

A couple of years ago I started to gain a real interest in music. I decided to start learning the guitar to go deeper into this interest. I have been playing the guitar pretty much every week since then and I have really enjoyed it. The process of learning a new instrument was tedious at times for me but was overall fun and interesting, so for this project I wanted to do it again. I first came up with the idea of learning the mandolin because of a song I really enjoyed. I watched a live performance of the song and I saw one of the artists was playing the mandolin. The instrument sounded beautiful to me and playing it seemed interesting.

Link to the performance I was talking about is here.

Another reason I want to learn the mandolin is that I want to improve my music skills. The skills I learn with this project can be applied to other stringed instruments I play. I also think that the more instruments I learn the easier it will be to learn more. This is because I will pick up more skills that can be used and better techniques for learning new skills.

How?

The main way I plan on learning the skills is by using a two-phase process. Phase one will be all about breaking down the skill into different parts. This would include practicing going through the motions, listening for the right sounds, and memorizing placements/patterns. Phase two is about putting the skill into use. This is to test that I have become comfortable with them. I would do this by finding a song or a part of a song that includes the skill and learning it. This shows that I have learned the skill because I can not only perform the skill on its own but also mixed with other skills. I find that this usually shows me when I have truly gotten a skill because I have had times where I thought I had a part of a song down. However, when I tried to play it with other parts it was much more difficult than when I was playing it isolated.

The first skill that I plan on learning for my in-depth is the chords and strumming. This is the skill I will be working on for the next couple of weeks. I am starting with this because I think it will create a solid base skill to use throughout my other learning. I plan on learning songs for each of my skills and learning to strum chords first makes sense for this. Lots of songs include strumming or can be simplified to strumming so it will allow me to play full songs faster. I can also add to this as I learn new skills to play more complicated parts mixed with strumming. I will be learning this by memorizing chord charts like the one below and learning strumming songs to get better at switching between different chords.

After this, I will learn skills like pick and hand picking as well as skills for playing more complex riffs like hammer-ons and pull-offs. I will do this using the two-phase practicing plan laid out before. The timeline for these skills will usually be one week of phase one and one week of phase two for each skill. Though, these could vary for skills like hand-picking that are more difficult for me. I plan on practicing the mandolin for 20-30 minutes every 1-2 days for the beginning of my project. I planned this because I have heard that getting used to the double strings can be painful. After I have gotten used to that, I might change to longer practices farther apart if I think that would be more enjoyable.

Mentorship:

I was very excited to find a mentor for this project who can offer me help and was interested in the project. For my mentor, I was able to get in contact with someone that has been playing the mandolin for 40 years. Not only do they play the mandolin, but they also have experience playing music in a band. I am very grateful that they are enthusiastic to help me learn the instrument because they obviously have enjoyed their time playing it. I am excited to meet with them and ask any questions I come across during my learning. I would also love to learn more about their experience playing with other musicians because that is something I am interested in trying. Right now, we haven’t met yet because we are waiting on a record check but we will be able to meet in the next week or two when the check comes back.

Thanks for reading! I am excited to start diving into my project even more in the next couple of weeks as I meet with my mentor and start playing the mandolin regularly.