An octave mandola, an expat and a laptop walk into a bar…
When I married the Ninja Butler in 2005, my Mom and Dad gave us a guitar and an “_blank” href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave_mandola”>octave mandola that they made for us. My Mom did mountains of research to source materials and my Dad worked the wood. It
goes without saying that my jaw hit the floor when I laid eyes on them – seriously, imagine me as a cartoon with my eyes yoinking outta my head with an ‘awooooogah’ sound effect to finish it
off.
I named the mandola ‘Jarvi’ after my Mom and Dad and it’s taken a prize position in our studio ever since. I pick ‘er up every once and awhile and play through some of the old songs I wrote
back when I was 18 and still a bag of hormones…
But it makes me feel ho-hum that I don’t play her more… she’s a beauty and should be strutting her stuff and making all the other acoustic instruments’ hearts flutter. So today I went online
and started an online course (after a lot of hunting – it turns out there aren’t really online courses for the octave mandola / octave mandolin. Bouzouki? Yes. Octave mandola?
No.)
But I managed to find one set of lessons that were made up of simple written instructions with some recommended exercises to develop good technique.
I’ve played the mandolin for years and years and the Octave is the same tuning. But the mandola has a stretched neck that I’m finding pretty trixie. The action is going to take some
getting used to, too – it’s higher than the mandolin and my wuss hands are jellified after practicing…
But it feels good to take Jarvi the mandola out for a real spin. She is GORGEOUS – you’d have a huge crush on her if you met her. Hopefully soon you will :)
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