Fiddler in the Pit

As if our lives weren't busy enough - last week I spent 5 days in my old stomping grounds - the orchestra pit at FHS.

Me in the pit with Mandolin and my trusty Ibanez Pat Metheny Hollow Body

The director asked me last December if I knew how to play Mandolin, as they would be putting on "Fiddler on the Roof" this year and the book was for Mandolin & Guitar. Thinking I could pull the old studio guitarist's trick of tuning the instrument like a guitar and wailing away, I said "sure"!

After the music arrived and I a student loaned me a mandolin, I realized I had made a big mistake. Given the tuning and string gauges, I couldn't tune the thing like a guitar. Yikes - what to do now? After trying to learn all the chords from scratch (ok if you're playing 3 chord country songs, but not for a broadway book), I visited my favorite guitar store in Omaha (Russo's) and asked for help. My old buddy Ned looked at me like I was an idiot and said "Hey - it's just like playing a guitar upside down".

At first I didn't follow him, but then I saw what he meant. The guitar is tuned (from thickest string to thinnest) E - A - D - G - B -E. The Mandolin is tuned (from thickest to thinnest) G - D - A - E, each string being in pairs. If you ignore the last 2 stings on the guitar, it is the same notes reversed.

So, with this newfound knowledge, I sheepishly went back home and started to try and think "upside down". This made things a lot easier (until I started looking at the single -note lines).

If I'd been really smart, I'd have found a left handed mandolin, and played it backwards, so that it was playing it like a guitar forwards (yes - your head should be spinning about now). But there wasn't time to find left handed mandolins - not even with Ebay.

Pretending to read a D7b9 chord.

So, long story short, after about 5 weeks of practice, I got the point where I could fool most of the people most of the time. It was really interesting - even during production week, I found new voicings for various chords and played things differently as the week progressed.

I actually got to the point of enjoying playing the thing, but not enough to keep me from posting it on Ebay tonight. I also have a newfound respect for Chris Thiele of NickelCreek.

Lesson learned: Next time I get asked to play an instrument that I don't really play - go to the music store first, pick the thing up and try and tune it to a guitar. If you can't - say no or plan on some time for woodshedding . . . .

;-)