Chords for Learn to Unlock the Mandolin Neck!

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_ Howdy, welcome to [Em] BanjoBandClark [Dm].com.
This is [A] BanjoBand_ Wait!
_ [G] _ We [Em] also got a piano on set today and that's because we're going to work on unlocking this mandolin neck.
This is a huge lesson today.
This is another one I wish I would have had years ago whenever I was first starting to play.
We're going to take the mandolin, we're going to compare it [N] with the mother instrument,
the piano, and that's going to help you see this mandolin neck in a way that you've never
seen it before.
I can promise you that.
Even if you're a more experienced mandolin player, you've been playing for a while, I
want you to take a new look at your mandolin neck.
If you're watching this on YouTube or Facebook, here in a moment I'll ask you to come over
to the website BanjoBandClark.com.
You can join as a Goal Pick member, have access to this 30-minute lesson, _ incredible insights
in this lesson, as well as hundreds of other lessons on banjo and guitar as well.
So let's jump right into unlocking the mandolin neck.
Today you begin your journey of unlocking the mandolin.
I'm glad to be here with you because I have a very special way of explaining to you how
the mandolin works.
We're going to do that in a very specific way, and I want to challenge you to look at
this instrument like you've probably never looked at any instrument before.
The first thing I'd like to do is compare the mandolin neck to what we might call the
mother instrument [E] or to a piano.
You know, when you first look at a mandolin neck, one of the things you might [G] notice is
that there's four sets of strings.
There's eight total strings, but we can think about them as four because they're tuned in pairs.
The first pair is tuned to an E note.
The second string is tuned a little lower to an [D] A note.
The third to a D note.
And then the fourth is the [G] lowest in pitch and tone.
It's tuned to a G note.
But what's also important is to notice what these strings stretch out over.
And if you'll notice, all these little divisions here, we call those frets.
And lots of stringed instruments have those, but those frets are very important because
they're not placed there randomly.
They're placed there at a very specific interval so that each one is related to the one beside
it in a very specific way.
And so if we were to start with our lowest string and we were to play up playing every
fret, we would be doing something called playing chromatically up the scale.
So start there with an [Ab] open, play [A] first fret, [Gm] second, [Bm] third, [C] fourth, and you kind [D] of hear
what that sounds [Eb] like.
[N] But it's important for us to maybe visualize that, what it would look like on a piano so
that you see the relationship here between these two instruments.
Because what we really have here on the mandolin, instead of four strings, we can kind of look
at it as four little piano keyboards.
[G] And it helps once we see it like that.
So if we were to go to the piano and we were to start on that very same G note that our
lowest mandolin string is tuned to, it would be this G here beneath middle C.
And if we were to play up chromatically, we would simply play up, not skipping a single note.
So it would sound like this.
[Ab] _ [Bb] _ [B] _ [F] _ _ [D] _ _ _
[G] So we can think about this as the open string and this would [Ab] be the first fret.
_ [Gbm] [Ebm] Second fret, third, [B] fourth, [Db] fifth, [Eb] sixth, seventh, [F] eighth, [Gb] ninth, tenth, [G] eleventh, twelfth.
There's an [Ab] octave.
[Bb] And we [G] would keep going up.
And of course, once we get to about right here, we would get to the top of the operable
range you could say of the mandolin before the notes start getting a little mushy.
Now if we were to have a mandolin built like a piano, then I guess we would have one string
that would stretch out over 40 or 60 frets.
Or I guess if it was just like a piano, it would be 88 frets.
Okay, well that would be really, really tough to play, wouldn't it, trying to navigate all that.
So what the builders of string instruments thought, they thought, well, how about we
go just a ways on one string and then let's start over.
And let's do another one.
And let's start over.
And let's do another one.
And start over and do another one.
And all these stringed instruments are like that so that we can play and get around on
this mandolin neck with less movement than even you can on a piano.
For example, let's take a G arpeggio.
_ _ _ _ You saw how little my left hand moves here. _ _ _
If I was going to play that same thing on piano, look what I'd have to do. _ _
_ _ _ I'm having to cover a lot of ground, aren't I?
Because I have these four piano necks squished down on top of each other here with the mandolin,
we can cover those notes more quickly _ with less movement.
So [E] what I want to talk about is how these strings are broken down.
Where do we get these redundancies?
Because this is very, very important as we begin to understand how to unlock this mandolin
neck in that I can get this note here _ and I can get that very same note here.
And when you start to understand how this mandolin, how the strings are integrated,
then it starts to make sense.
_ Now how do these strings relate [G] to each other?
Well it just so happens that if we were to start on this lowest [A] string [Eb]
and we were to
[D] play up to the [N] seventh fret, that is when the note of the next string would take over.
So if [D] you go up to the seventh fret [G] of the lowest string, that's a D note, that [D] _
happens
to be the same pitch as the next open string.
And here's what's cool about the mandolin is [G] that we have the same intervals between
each one of the strings.
That's really going to help us figure this out.
So that means if we were to start on the third string, the D string, [N] and we go up to the
seventh fret, _ _ [A] _ that tone that we get there is the same tone as the next open string.
[Dm] [A] And in the same [B] way you [A] guessed it, we can go all the way up [Eb] to the [G] seventh fret and
_ we reach the tone of the first string.
Now what I want to do for you, because I think this is pretty cool, is I want to show you
on the piano where our string ranges [Eb] are.
And then that will help you visualize how we take kind of these four piano [B] fingerboards
and stack them on top of each other.
But let's say that each string can be played up to the fifteenth fret.
Now I know there's these Chris Thiles out there and all these other great players that
can play way up here.
[G] I just can't do it.
I'm not going to make excuses, but it's not very clean.
But if we play up to the fifteenth fret, that's going to be enough for most every song.
So if we start here on the low G string [Bb] and we were to go [G] up to the fifteenth fret, then
we would go all the way up to what would be a B flat note.
What does that look like on the piano?
Well, we start here.
We would be able to travel [Am] chromatically _ all [Bb] _ the way [Am] up to this B flat.
So that's quite a range that we [Gm] have there.
What about the next string?
Where would it start?
Well, the next string starts on a D note.
If we were [G] to go chromatically _ _ up to the fifteenth fret, we would go up to an F [D] natural.
So if we start on this D note, there's the third string, the open [Eb] string.
First [Em] fret, [Dm] second. _
_ _ All the way up to this F string.
So our second string's operable range would be about [F] that far.
So you begin to see how these strings _ overlap in places.
What about our second string?
Well, it would start [D] on this A note.
_ _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _ [G] _ _ [D] _ _ _ _ [G] _
[D] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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