The Mandolin

Today I bought a mandolin!

Sounds like a confession doesn’t it. My geekiness knows no bounds!

For the past 5 or so years I have been thinking about playing the mandolin and I finally took the plunge and found an instructor and bough a mandolin. I am not particularly musical, so my musical experiment will be interesting. Growing up my Mom signed the evil twin and I up for guitar and keyboard lessons, to less than stellar results. In middle school everyone had to play the recorder and in high school and a year in college I sang in the choir. For years I wanted to play the violin, but I know that it’s a hard instrument to learn, especially when you are an adult (although my Grandfather tried to play when he was in his 70s and 80s), so I never tried to play. Besides my Mom playing the accordion in the 1960s and 70s (don’t ask), my people are not particularly musical.

So my new shiny mandolin is a Eastman MD 315 F-Style. A student mandolin. Apparently it is Chinese and made of spruce and maple. I purchased it from The Podium a music store in Minneapolis, which sadly is closing down so that they can tear down the building and build condos. But lucky for me, the mandolin was on sale, came with a gig bag, and they gave me a handful of picks (different styles), some extra strings, and a luggage tag for free!