The sound of the mandolin is a very curious sound because it's cheerful and melancholy at the same time, and I think it comes from that shadow string, the double strings.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
One of the basic things about a string is that it can vibrate in many different shapes or forms, which gives music its beauty.
Every demo I do has a mandolin or resonator on it - some element of the bluegrass or classic country world that I grew up listening to and that first drew me in. And then I always try to find somewhere for a bluesy guitar sound, because that's also what I love. Musically, I'm always finding my way home.
I learned how to play mandolin for 'A Mighty Wind!'
There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.
I like guitar sounds to be a little somber.
When I hear bluegrass today, I hear so many new sounds in it. It's almost like country music in a way.
Maybe its a case of one guitar feeling a certain way to the hands that makes one subsequently move differently over the strings, but my intent is always to wring the maximum emotional resonance out of the object in hand.
That song has the full extent of my mandolin abilities; I'm not a good mandolin player at all.
The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice.
At a young age I thought, 'Wow, that fiddle thing, that's pretty cool. That mandolin is great. These drums, I like these drums... ' They were Indian drums. And I was saying, 'But that guitar. That guitar. Girls are going to like that guitar.'