The First Chords, Chores, and Considerations

Beginning to make some kind of system out of the new hobby, and to understand some of the treats of the related business

Photo by John Lyttle on Unsplash

What an amazing world of enthusiasts I have entered when buying the mandolin! It didn’t take long before I not only understood that very many beginners start out with a cheap mandolin, even though some experienced players advise against these, but also that a mandolin mostly doesn’t work as it should when you get it – it needs to be set up.

There is a forum for mandolin players on www.mandolincafe.com, and there, like typical for internet forums, you’ll find all kinds of comments and questions, including such as “which mandolin is good”, “how can I make my mandolin play better”, “which strings should I use”, etc. – and they almost all have at least one of the comments saying something like “you need to get the mandolin set up properly”.

Some music shops can do that before handing out the instrument to you. I have a feeling that this is mostly a thing in the USA, where customization and adaptation, personalization, and so forth, are positive words. In Sweden, where I live, people seem to accept what comes out of the can as a full meal, also symbolically for such as a mandolin. Or maybe I just didn’t meet the right people here, which is possible ;)

Nevertheless, I can’t ask the reseller to “set up” the mandolin for me, like it seems to be possible in the USA.

Luckily, a great guy called Rob Meldrum has written a book about how to do it, that he gives away for free at the Mandolin Café, described in this thread.

The book tells how he has improved several mandolins through a few steps that are then described in details, so that you can do it too if you have that book around.

Even though I found my mandolin to be good, I decided to run through the book and check/fix everything as described.

So far, I have quickly browsed through it, and I can see that there are things to adjust. I need some tools, and some better strings, so I have ordered these things and will proceed with the setup of my mandolin when they arrive. Looks like the buying hobby has begun showing its ugly face already! Well, I do expect that this is a one-time event, and even if not, the tools can be used again the next time, so no need to keep buying things.

One thing I decided to add, that I never had on my guitars, is a strap, to make it possible to hang the instrument over the neck/shoulder when playing. For the guitar, it is not needed, as I sit when playing it, using a special pillow to make the perfect support for the instrument – a pillow that my former guitar teacher had made for me by a friend.

A mandolin, however, is a smaller instrument, and even though it is also lighter and can be held by the hands when playing, I believe that the strap will give me some needed extra level of freedom to focus on placing my hands right for the music production, when not used for merely holding the instrument.

And thinking forward, I can see that the excellent beginners course I got at Udemy will end sooner rather than later, and I will need more training after that. So a couple of books are now also on the way – one that helps to define a practice plan, another that teach me some introductory songs, to get me started with actually playing something. There is also another, much recommend book, that I plan to get later, when I am reaching the end of what I have now.

So, the full book list looks like:

• How to Set Up a Mandolin, by Rob Meldrum

• How to Play Mandolin in 14 Days: Daily Lessons for Absolute Beginners, by Tristan Scroggins

• First 50 songs You Should Play on Mandolin, by Sokolow Fred

• The ultimate mandolin songbook: 26 Favorite Songs, by Davis Janet

I will also go hunting for some examples of mandolin music to get inspired from, all genres. The aim is to quickly get to a point where I can actually play something real, even though it may not be at a high level for a start – it takes time to become good at an instrument. Playing something real, i.e., not just scales and chords, makes the instrument feel useful and “friendly” – otherwise it is just a training tool, effectively being a burden that drags out time and energy.

I checked, btw., where my instrument had been made, and, of course, it is from China. As a matter of fact, there may be no production of mandolins at all left in Europe! Perhaps some individual instruments are made by luthiers, but there seems to be no production of shelf products.

The more expensive models of American brands are made in America, but all the cheaper ones, plus all the European brands, are in fact made in China, often as generic products that, like mine, just gets a brand name printed on it.

A quick search, and I found my mandolin at a wholesale site, where it can become quite inexpensive already from 10 pcs – less than $30, probably much less at higher quantities. So, that’s what my dealer did – probably buying a lot more than 10, as this is a large dealer with affiliates in several countries. And they had their name printed on the mandolin.

We may get fascinated by the fact that something can be bought at such prices as $90, which I think was what I paid for mine (a bit more, since it was a set with a bag and a digital tuner – the latter at $1,10 in China, $12 here). So, still, at this fascinating price, the shop can earn quite a lot.

I checked for some of the other models on the market, and some other kinds of instruments, and they are all from China, or there are copies made there, or both.

This is good and bad, in the sense that it makes it possible to buy instruments at low prices, but also that it takes away almost all initiative from local manufacturers, as their instruments, while perhaps better, would become too expensive and difficult to sell. For the perhaps limited size of the upper market, where rock stars buy fancy instruments, the few American manufacturers plus a large amount of small, often just individual instrument makers can cover the needs.

So, in other words, if I want to play music, I need to buy an instrument from China, until the day when I can justify buying an expensive American model, or a probably even more expensive special-made instrument by a local luthier.

The way people do it is possibly like what I have seen with 3D printers: they buy something that isn’t well functioning, and then they simply use it as a starting point for an improvement project. New and better strings for sure, but also modifications to the few accessories that such an instrument has, and perhaps a replacement of the “tail piece” or the “tuners” with a better type.

Even the more expensive mandolins seem to need such a treatment in order to play their best, and that probably helps make the musicians feel closer to their instrument, as they have had it fine-tuned and set up, just for them.

Now, I am still working on actually learning how to play the instrument, but so far the view to get a better sound and the knowledge that it will then be set up as good as it goes, which is assumed to be quite good indeed, has left me even more happy with my purchase.

The availability of all other kinds of instruments at low prices directly from China is rumbling in my mind, and sooner or later I may do it: buy one or more – now that I know it is possible to add and adjust, to make the cheap purchase end up being a great one.

That’s perhaps the down-side of China’s success in the area. Local music shops are not providing anything else than just being middlemen for the purchase from China: they deliver unopened boxes as they have received them, and even though they may have a selection of strings, straps, and other accessories, they in general don’t offer much else that Amazon or other non-dedicated webshops, or indeed the Chinese shops, can sell cheaply.

There is no extra quality, no extra value to get from the local shop. In a sense, you could say that they do not show you the same loyalty as you would like to show them. That would materialize in having local products, for instance, and a special quality and useful advice, a rich total experience. But they just move boxes, and as this can be done by anyone, I wonder what the reason should be for paying twice the price for a Chinese instrument at a local webshop compared to a Chinese one. Faster delivery, perhaps, even though quite many models have delivery times of several months when bought from the local shops, and this, the Chinese shops can easily match, even though they are often slow at delivering.

Now, a prediction could be that therefore there isn’t a great future for, at least, European music shops. No local production, no added service, no reason to buy from them.

I am sure that there are exceptions, and that many music shops have competent people who can help and give advice, but it needs to be extended to also work through their web sales, as much of what we do today is arranged along that channel.

Loyalty to the European brands is difficult to find, as they are not doing anything else than ordering ready products from a Chinese factory, like the shops. No product development or care for their customers. Just raw industrialism and box moving.

The users, on the other side, are real people with a real interest in music. They make the whole thing worthwhile.

So far there is an identified online community, many people who enjoy playing this instrument and talk about it, and there are excellent examples of people mastering it and using it in their professional music. So, what I need to do next, on the social scale, is to seek places where amateurs actually play together, so that I perhaps one day can take part in some of that.

And to me, there’s no stress, no hurry. I’m doing this because I want to, at my own speed, to make my life richer. We all need something like that, I guess. And we should all allow ourselves to arrange for it.