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domradave |
By all means, take up classical mandolin!
I have been playing, off and on, with the Long Island Mandolin and Guitar Orchestra for 40 years.
Much of the time I played the mandola, a Flatiron, and enjoyed playing the harmony parts.
I also played 2nd mandolin which I play now.
Barry Mitterhoff is one great mandolin player who played with a mandolin orchestra, the New York Mandolin Orchestra that still plays in New York City. His friends and colleagues, Danny Weiss, the guitarist. and Larry Cohen, of Tony Trischka's Skyline, played mandolin and bass in the orchestra.
It is worth learning how to read standard notation. Some of the recent mandolin books from Mel Bay feature tab along with standard notation of classical pieces. Mike Marshall has also issued a number of books. I don't know if he features classical mandolin on his Artistworks teaching forum.
Frank Wakefield composed some solo mandolin pieces that sound a lot like Bach! I was told that he learned a lot of classical mandolin from the Berkley Mandolin Ensemble, like the Beethoven sonatina.
But the literature for mandolin is immense. And it is good to embrace the larger instruments, the octave mandolin and mandocello, and learning the bass clef.
My favorite mandolin composer is Francois Menichetti who wrote some wonderful orchestra pieces. Some orchestras on Youtube play his works. Menichetti helps convince me that the mandolin is a real instrument!
So get a music stand and find your local mandolin orchestra!
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