Lesson
Holding the mandolin: sitting, standing, and the strap
A mandolin is small, and that fools people. Held badly, it slides around, the neck droops, and your fretting hand ends up holding the instrument up instead of playing it. Get the hold right and every other lesson gets easier.
The one rule
Neither hand should be supporting the mandolin. Your fretting hand needs to move freely up and down the neck, and your picking hand needs a relaxed wrist. If either hand is doing lifting duty, something in the hold needs fixing.
Sitting
- Sit toward the front of a chair with a straight-ish back, feet flat.
- Rest the body of the mandolin on your right thigh (left, if you play left-handed), roughly where your leg meets your hip.
- Let your right forearm rest lightly on the top edge of the body, near the tailpiece. That forearm is what holds the instrument in place, not your hands.
- Angle the neck up a little, so the headstock sits around shoulder height. A horizontal neck makes chords harder than they need to be.
- Tilt the top of the instrument slightly toward you so you can glance at the fretboard without hunching.
Check: take both hands off. The mandolin should stay put. If it doesn’t, move it further into the crook of your arm and body.
Standing
Standing is all about the strap. Set it so the mandolin sits in the same place it does when you sit: body against your ribs, neck angled up. The most common mistake is letting it hang low around the belt; it looks relaxed and plays terribly.
Use a strap even when sitting
Most experienced players do. It takes the “is it going to slide?” question off the table entirely, and it means the instrument is in an identical position whether you sit or stand, so your hands only have to learn one geometry.
Any thin guitar or mandolin strap works. One end goes on the strap button at the tail; the other loops around the headstock behind the nut, or attaches to a button on the neck heel if your mandolin has one.
Two things to feel for
- Shoulders down. If your right shoulder creeps up toward your ear, the instrument is too high or too far out. Lower it until the shoulder drops.
- Wrist straight. Look at your fretting wrist: a big bend means the neck is too low or too flat. Raise the headstock until the wrist relaxes.
Ten seconds of checking these at the start of every practice will save you from bad habits that are much harder to undo later. Next: tuning up.