krs wrote:

Every thread turns into a general discussion thread before very long. It's good to start new ones to spread things out a bit.

Thanks, that's kind of you to say.

You totally should get an (affordable) mandolin you know. I think you'll find that not only will your fiddle playing ability inform what you do on the mando, but after a while it'll work the other way around too. Taking up the banjo has had profound effect with my relationship with the guitar - it's hard to describe exactly how, but when a new instrument forces you to approach the act of making music in a new way, it has an impact on everything you do musically, including the way you approach an instrument you've been playing for years. My Dad's found the same - learning the mandolin and mandola recently has made him see the guitar in new ways, and he's been playing the guitar for over forty years!

They're both string instruments so experience with one will aid learning the other. Experience in a family of instruments always helps you learn another instrument from that family a little. Violin experience would be more useful when trying to learn the mandolin than it would a trumpet for example as the trumpet is from a different family so there's absolutely no similarities in technique.

Yeah i get your point, just don't agree. I pick up new string instruments far quicker because i can play guitar. The similarities are more beneficial than the differences are a hindrance. But then other people might be different i guess.

He can play the cello though. I mean taste might dictate that he's not good in your eyes but he's not an amateur, his notation is bang on, his vibrato is reasonably accomplished. 

Do you play anything yourself?

Sounds alright to me.

metascrawl wrote:

Loads of good stuff

Cheers for the detailed response! I work close to Denmark street so keep meaning to pop in there for a looksie, although my past experiences with a few of those shops have been quite hit and miss, varying from mostly helpful (mostly) to indifference. I'll be checking out Andy's on your recommendation instead.

I haven't really looked too much into the different types of banjo but was planning on a resonator, for the reasons you mention. I'm fairly confident it'll be an instrument I at least enjoy playing, regardless of whether or not I get good at it, so was contemplating paying up to £300 for something to make sure it's not a complete piece of shit. As mentioned before though, I need to get a new acoustic too as I'm down to just a fairly cheap flamenco guitar at the moment and it doesn't always cut it for what I want to play.

This may be imposing myself a little bit but if any London based pickers would be so kind as to give me a hands on with their instrument (oo-er) I'd be most grateful. I always feel reluctant to spend much time in a shop trying things out, especially as I'm not particularly great, so a more casual, friendly get together would be top. In fact any acoustic jamming in general would be great, haven't played with other people for a very long time.

ahaha nice.

You sure that link is a good idea considering his relationship to you bro?

2 people watched it and one of them was probably you, so I should be ok!

Such a great bloke, all his stuff is grown in soil and sold at a fair price of £20 for 3 grammes.

Calls me Silver as in Nickle-Ass, Silver-bottom. Always tickles me.

Jacuzzi_Jackson wrote:

Yeah i think the guy can play. But then i don't care about classical training and i'm actively against elitism in music, i often prefer people who have a rudimentary style of play than people who are technically amazing. Playing cello in a style influenced by guitar to me is interesting not wrong. But yes he'd probably never make it on a professional circuit.

To be fair, it's difficult to hear how limited he is via the medium of YouTube and also as he's not trying to play anything technically or musically demanding, but he's demonstrating a technique which not only has little to no application to playing the cello but worse is actively undermining his natural coordination and ability to make use of the considerable expressive potential of the instrument.  It only rankles with me particularly because he's touting himself as an 'expert' and thus potentially spreading his harmful habits to other aspiring musicians.

The point of learning classical cello technique is not that it allows you to play classical music.  It's about recognising what a simple resonant box with some strings attached is capable of in the right hands. Just as learning 'classical' tennis technique allows you to use a simple tennis racquet to hit a tennis ball sweetly and accurately over the net in any given situation, and with an infinite variety of touch and spin, for example. And just as tennis technique is constantly evolving, our understanding of cello technique is too, as our understanding of how the instrument and of how the human body works evolves. That classical music often stretches the technical and musical capabilities of players more than any other genre of music is simply the result of the two evolving hand in hand over centuries, constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible and searching for ever greater creative potential. A cursory glance at the mechanical evolution of the piano over the past 400 years or so is a very good illustration of this.  The instruments and their techniques evolve to meet the ever growing creative demands of the music written for them, and vice versa.

Gaining a deep understanding of the particular traits and possibilities of a given instrument and how to coordinate your self effectively to make best advantage of this allows you to play whatever you want, classical or otherwise, whilst putting at your disposal the means to conjure up an infinite variety of timbre, dynamic, intonation, timing etc as your imagination demands.  It's an unending search which isn't about being 'technically amazing' for the sake of it but giving yourself the tools to communicate eloquently with an audience.

Sadly, what that guy's doing though is akin to trying to sculpt a block of marble with a road drill. He ain't no Michelangelo.

igor - I think you are putting too much stock in this one example you've found. You deem him an idiot and judge his skills on the instrument as worthless (or not applicable or whatever). Comes across a bit snobby but i understand your standards are a lot higher than most - but your standards are just that, your standards. Sure if he's claiming to be a classically trained expert then that is questionable but in principle there's nothing wrong with learning an instrument in the wrong way to develop your own style. I mean look at Hendrix, like him or not there's no denying he had an impact as a guitarist. He played a right handed guitar upside down. Before strumming a note Hendrix was doing everything wrong, he wouldn't have amounted to anything if classical training and doing things in the "correct" way were as important as you are making out.  Obviously classical training can yield amazing results but it is just one possible route as a musician.

But back to the original point - Even if we're talking classically trained musicians, i'd still say someone who could play Cello professionally would pick up the violin quicker than someone who couldn't play an instrument at all. Experience with any instrument is massively beneficial and outweighs the lesser issues of carrying across bad habits. Personally i think its an odd thing to even contest but there you go...

He was also a fair deal more talented than your average schmoe.

I lament being lax with my thumb positions when learning.

^ I see your point, and it is well made. With me and the banjo though, it did change my guitar playing in ways that were not at all to do with transferring banjo technique on to the guitar - I did try that and it was a waste of time, some people do clawhammer on guitar but it seems pretty pointless to me. What I meant is that learning a second instrument, in a non-linear and quite difficult way to describe, made me look afresh at what I'd been doing on my original instrument. I found myself doing stuff on guitar, particularly right hand stuff that, although completely unrelated to the banjo right-hand technique I'd been learning, was stuff I'd never thought to do before. I just felt like playing in a completely different way on the banjo had somehow opened me up to doing new things on guitar - and these aren't things I'd learned, but just sort of come out with spontaneously while improvising (and then worked on if I liked them).

Of course, there are many right hand techniques that I could only gain by specifically setting out to learn them, but I was pleasantly surprised to find I'd become a more inventive guitar player having worked with the banjo for a while, in a way that required almost no extra effort. I have no idea of the mechanism for how this took place, but it was a nice bonus to having taken up a second instrument in my experience. I did, as you suggest, learn the banjo from scratch as a separate instrument, I never tried to play it like a guitar, or very rarely anyway. And I never tried to play the guitar like a banjo. But still, this weird subterranean crossover thing happened, and I doubt it's unique to me.

And as for bad habits? I'm a completely self-taught folk and blues player without much technical ability or theoretical knowledge (some, but not much) so my bad habits are the only things I've got going for me in terms of having a sound of my own.

Yossarian wrote:

Talking of Hendrix, guitar teachers always tell you you should have your thumb behind the neck to provide a better grip. Hendrix never did.

Tempy wrote:

He was also a fair deal more talented than your average schmoe. I lament being lax with my thumb positions when learning.

The fiddle grip, unless you're playing classical or flamenco is every bit as valid as having your thumb braced on the back of the neck. That's how my Dad's played for forty years, that how I play. As Yoss says Hendrix had that big old thumb of his over the top of the neck constantly. So did Mississippi John Hurt. I always make F's by fretting the bass string with my thumb - you can't hammer on the g string within the F chord unless you do that, and consequently almost any John Hurt song on the key of C would be rendered unplayable. Nothing against the other grip, but you won't get anywhere in a lot of styles, including the county blues which is the basis for most of what I play, if you haven't got a least the option of playing out of a fiddle grip.

Look at what Fahey does from 2:30 in order to use a chord he nicked from Holst: