Mandolin is an exceedingly versatile instrument. Perhaps more than any of us can imagine. As mandolin lovers, we hope for the instrument to continue to evolve and flourish in all settings. Better yet, we’d like to join our instruments into these new realms. The goal of this article is to help accomplish this.

Enter: Dimensional Mandolin. This is an approach to practice and playing which helps to break yourself from traditional mandolin styles. Instead of compartmentalizing your playing, dimensional mandolin allows your mandolin music to be an extension of yourself.

Mandolin is often thought of as being limited to traditional styles of music. Dimensional mandolin is a new approach to playing the mandolin that breaks from traditional confines and allows players to explore new sounds and techniques, while building on the hard work of others. This new style of mandolin playing opens up a world of possibilities for mandolinists of all skill levels. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned player, dimensional mandolin offers a whole new way to approach your instrument.

Dimensional mandolin is all about breaking the rules. It’s about pushing the boundaries of what the mandolin can do. If you’re willing to take the jump into this new style of playing, you’ll be rewarded with a whole new world of musical possibilities.

“We all possess an inborn creative force that wants to become active. – Mastery, Robert Greene”

What do you hear when you play your instrument? What does it sound like to you? I’m sure you have your own ideas and visions as to how you want the notes to sound. Effortless, intriguing, and fresh are what pop in my mind. However, I don’t always feel as though that is what my playing evokes. This is the uncomfortable feeling of growth. If this is how you feel at times, dimensional mandolin is on your path.

The journey of dimensional mandolin is meant to bring fresh air into your playing and to make you think about the technique of your instrument, not the way it is played. It requires change, but nothing too drastic. You must only bring a fresh mind and a devotion to the mysterious.

There are three distinct aspects of dimensional mandolin. First is Original Mandolin, where you embrace your inner-child and open yourself to playing your instrument, in the truest sense. Second is Conventional Mandolin where you dedicate your efforts to grasping tried and true methods built by others. Finally is Dimensional Mandolin where the two previous aspects of mastery are combined. You know the rules, and are restless to break them in order to more vividly express yourself moment to moment.

Original Mandolin

Original mandolin is sitting somewhere comfortable, without the distractions of tablature and particular songs to lead your play. No one is around to care about how you sound, and if they are, you don’t pay it mind. Your intention is to channel the worries and satisfactions of the day through your mandolin. This is an emotional experience as well as an auditory one. When you play the mandolin, you become part of the music. Original Mandolin is free form playing. You make up your own rules on what sounds right. There is no striving to play well, it’s about playing how you feel.

This isn’t to say your playing must sound emotional. That is an exceptional concept. Your playing much more likely will be mundane. Time to time you may surprise yourself, but mostly it will be notes from a pentatonic scale. Nothing special in itself. It may not be what you’d want to perform in front of others. Nonetheless, Original Mandolin is not tedious. You are opening up new pathways of playing.

Only from practicing Original Mandolin will you find a sound of your own. It will not be refined, but it will show you what is possible. And from that vantage you can feel free to continue towards the musical ideas you feel closest to.

Practicing Original Mandolin

Take a moment to unearth the instincts of your younger self. Journey back to when you were 5 years old. How were you feeling about the world when you couldn’t tie your shoes? With all your heart you believed that mistakes weren’t permanent. Get yourself to that place now please. Prepare to play.

No matter how skilled you are, this mindset will help the music flow better. Let the sounds guide you and take you to new heights. Relax and let the melodies wash over you. You’ll be amazed at how much your playing improves when you let yourself be open to the music.

While this way of practicing may feel relaxed, do not let your technique slip. If you stumble over notes, or don’t produce the sound you want, try again. If you notice a lick trying to present itself in the jumble of your playing, do not hesitate to refine it. This space is often where new material surfaces.

You’ll begin to experience the reaches of not just your mandolin playing, but even what it means to be you. That is a lofty idea, but it is the essence of the practice.

Conventional Mandolin

Diverting from making up music without a destination for the notes to lead to, you’ll find yourself approaching Conventional Mandolin. While Original Mandolin is accomplished on a whim, this form of practice is anchored in the roots of meticulous deliberation, and emulation and study.

Conventional Mandolin is where you memorize music and embody other players as much as possible. Your own preferences and taste do not apply – you’re a sponge to other possibilities.

It can be argued that Conventional Mandolin is a more difficult practice. It requires dedicated study, and certainly the uncomfortable feeling of confusion. The music you are practicing is not in your head yet. You must link the notes before your eyes to your frets and picking.

But also, it is a less vulnerable exercise. In other words, Conventional Mandolin is more straightforward than Original Mandolin. For example, you can make a goal to perfect 4 fiddle tunes a month. Then at the end of the month you will know if you have accomplished this or not. It is not ethereal, and based on emotion. There is a lot of satisfaction that comes from Conventional Mandolin practice.

Practicing Conventional Mandolin

To begin practicing Conventional Mandolin, you’re going to need some sheet music to work off. You can’t just sit down and start strumming and picking away like Original Mandolin. You need something to follow. Thankfully, our world is full of amazing resources to provide great mandolin practice material. Let’s look at where you can start the search.

Online Sheet Music

Just about any song you could ever want to play is going to be somewhere on the internet. I always wanted to learn Squirrel of Possibilities by Punch Brothers. But it was really hard to find the tabs. Thankfully after some rephrasing of my search query and scrolling though message boards, I finally found it. Here is where I found it in case you want to learn it too.

Another awesome site is mandozine.com (not to be confused with MandoZen of course). To use the site to its fullest you’ll have to download the software TablEdit. Thankfully there is a great free version that you can download here. Coupling the tabs on mandozine and the functionality of TablEdit, you essentially have a cheat code for learning new tunes. TablEdit will play the song for you to hear how it goes. What’s even better is you can adjust the tempo to hear it played slower. That’s immensely helpful during the beginning stages of unlocking a tune.

Of course that is just an example of what is available on the internet. I think it is the best resource for online mandolin music, but it doesn’t have every tune imaginable on it. Other sites might have the song you’re looking for. I’m sure you’ll have luck if you search hard enough.

Song Books

You’re under a tall oak tree surrounded by a grassy field. The wind is blowing through your hair. You’ve brought your mandolin and a snack along for the outing. What you don’t have is internet or wifi. And that is just how it should be! Wow you are a lucky person.

But you still want to engage in some Conventional Mandolin practice. This is where good old fashioned song books come into play. You can take them anywhere, and they’re great for keeping you focused. The internet is great because it has just about any song imaginable. But what about when the song you want to learn is a little more difficult than you imagined. Its easy to go search for a new, simpler one. Song books don’t allow that as easily. You only have the tunes in the book! Plus you can write notes on the page which gives the sheet music personality. Years later you can open up the book and remember your thought process from back then.

What I really love about song books is you can learn another player’s repertoire if you have their material. By devoting yourself to their work you can learn what types of licks they like to recycle in various tunes. It’s so much easier to pick up on things like that when you see the patterns of notes on the page.

Here are a few of my favorite song books (affiliate links ahead):

1. The Hal Leonard Mandolin Fake Book: 300 Songs
2. Tone Poems for Mandolin (David Grisman and Tony Rice)
3. Chris Thile: Stealing Second
4. New Solos for Classical Mandolin Songbook – Concert Repertoire for Practice and Performance by August Watters
5. The Beatles For Solo Mandolin

Learn by Ear

This is the very best way to practice Conventional Mandolin. Learning by ear means listening to a song over and over until it’s stuck in your head so much that you can decode the notes through your instrument. You don’t have any material to help you figure out how to play the song, just active listening and rigorous trial and error.

My mandolin teacher learned to play mandolin by walking up and down the beach in Santa Barbara trying to play nursery rhymes and Christmas songs. That might not be the coolest thing anyone’s done on a Santa Barbra beach, but when he learned Jingle Bell Rock on a September afternoon, he knew he was making real progress.

This type of practice is not easy, but it is so rewarding. With lots of practice you’ll be able to learn even the most difficult songs by listening. Along the way you’ll perfect your active listening. Not only will it set yourself apart from other musicians, but you’ll get so much more enjoyment out of your instrument.

Dimensional Mandolin

After practicing Original Mandolin and Conventional Mandolin for some time, you will notice the two styles begin to converge. Your jamming without a destination will contain dispersed phrases from tunes you’ve practiced. When you sit down before a page of music, you will increase your ability to empathize with the original writer. This is the realm of Dimensional Mandolin.

Dimensional Mandolin is achieved through insight of who you are paired with the ability to express that representation through your instrument.

But as we know, who we are is a moving target. Moment by moment we are a new us. We grow and shrink. The weather changes us, and traffic, or the first sip of caffeine in the morning. We can’t help but respond to our environment. We shrink and grow.

Where do these feelings and sensations come from? For example: I am feeling gloomy because the weather is gloomy. If I analyze this assumption further I discover the weather may not be all that is affecting me. What is gloomy about fresh rain? Instead it might be because I have been feeling guilty for not being a good friend lately. I can question this. Why might I be feeling like an inadequate friend?

I can continue to investigate these feelings and where they might arise. But what it boils down to is the amorphous scheme of being human.

Dimensional Mandolin acts in this way too. Dimensional Mandolin begins by catching your premonitions, then testing how true they are. How many other explanations exist?

When you practice Original Mandolin you may notice a similar cadence to your playing. Phrases may link together as if natural. But how natural are they really? There is always another way to string notes to get across a deeper meaning. With the knowledge from Conventional Mandolin you have the skill to metaphorically turn the notes around in your hands. You can examine what other ways there are to express your music.

This thoughtfulness is the source of Dimensional Mandolin.

Enjoying the Journey

I hope you may experience your mandolin in a fresh way now that you know the basics of Dimensional Mandolin. It is an exciting adventure, and also one full of difficulties on the path to showing yourself through your instrument.

This process takes knowing yourself deeply. And as discussed, this self you are attempting to know is ever changing. It will take more than a lifetime to accomplish this, but it is a worthy pursuit.

Secondly, it takes developing the skills to portray yourself in the truest sense possible. To do this it takes devotion to your instrument. Your instrument will return this devotion as you practice often and thoughtfully, bringing out clear notes and interesting melodies.

Not only will your ability to play mandolin evolve, but you will also foster a unique style that is all your own. Others will come to notice and be drawn to your playing because of the substance.

See you soon on the path towards Dimensional Mandolin.