From the course: Mandolin Lessons: 1 Fundamentals

Unlock this course with a free trial

Join today to access over 22,400 courses taught by industry experts.

The left hand, part 1

The left hand, part 1

- The left hand. We're gonna talk about the left hand, but we're not gonna forget about the right hand, folks. Again, the right hand's the most important, but you do play with two hands, so here we go. The left hand. Again, it's all about relaxing. You don't want any tension anywhere. And the mandolin, you know, it's actually pretty hard to hold down these strings, because there's pairs of them. There's a lot of tension, twice as much as, say, on a violin, or on a guitar, really. So be careful that you're, the action on your mandolin, the heights of the strings off the fingerboard is not too high. I keep mine fairly low, but if you're feeling a lot of pain just pushing down the strings, I would lower it, especially for those of you who haven't been playing for very long. I mean, you want it to be fun. You don't want to have a miserable experience. And there's all kinds of things you can do to set up the bridge heights, or go with a lighter gauge string, so that you can play the thing,…

Contents