Musing about Music and the Mandolin

Music is such a powerful thing. On top of being something that basically every single person enjoys in one form or another, it has a unique characteristic to bring upon so many different feelings. It is a form of art, a language, that can captivate even the largest of audiences. I always love being surrounded by music, and I am at my happiest when I am playing or listening to music. I can spend all day playing music, whether the drums, piano, or bass guitar. (I would so much rather be doing that than writing this blog right now.) So when the time came to pick a topic for my ELI, I knew right away I wanted to spend my semester studying music and learning a new instrument. It didn’t take long for me to decide which instrument that was going to be. When I picked up the mandolin, I knew learning to play this little eight-stringed instrument was going to be an exciting, unique, and rather difficult task, and I also knew that I was going to love spending a whole semester doing it.

I’ve grown up listening to the mandolin constantly, either hearing my dad play or listening to music with mandolin in it, specifically Nickel Creek (favorite band ever). I love the sound of it, and being able play different songs that I have grown up listening to will be such a great experience. And, I am excited to have a new instrument in my repertoire to express music with.

During this ELI, I’m not only focusing on learning mandolin, but becoming a more proficient musician. That is why I’m also taking this opportunity to learn about music theory. As a musician, this is definitely something that I will need to know well. I’ve been playing drums for almost six years now, and since I didn’t have to know anything about notes or chords or any of that, I never took the time to understand the melodic/harmonic side of music theory, I only had to focus on the rhythmical part of it. Recently, when I started experimenting and playing around on other instruments, I realized that I really didn’t know anything about what I was playing on those instruments. I could listen to music and hear melodies and then figure them out, but I had no understanding of the music beyond the fact that it sounded cool. After looking into music theory during this ELI so far, my grasp on music has already become much more solidified, and there is still so much more to learn. All these little bits and pieces of what I knew about music are all coming together, and I can actually understand and analyze the music that I am playing.

I am going to be playing music as much as I can throughout my life. Researching it like this and spending a semester to look at it in depth is a great way to be able to do so much more with my music.

~Erik