Top 50 Mandolin Quotes & Sayings

I got my first instrument at Christmas when I was three or four. My dad and mom got me a mandolin. It was the only instrument that fit me because I was so small. I went straight from that into drums when I was six and then started playing guitar when I was seven or eight.

There's something cool about playing 'Tempted' and then picking up the mandolin and playing 'Dark as a Dungeon' and standing on the classics. It's nice to just let soul rule.

When I was 12 years old I discovered Bill Monroe and my dad got me a mandolin.

Give me a mandolin and I'll play you rock 'n' roll.

I play the piano and that's how I learned about music. I then taught myself the guitar, drums, percussion and various other things, such as the bazooka, the mandolin, the Theremin, the alpine horn, the didgeridoo.

I use both instruments with their strengths in mind. Mandolin - no sustain and attack of the right hand, for rhythm. Fiddle - use sustain of the bow and the ability to slide the non-fretted notes, like singing.

When Jack White called and wanted me to do a video and play mandolin with The Raconteurs, I didn't know anything about The Raconteurs at that time.

I don't know how it got around that I play a lot of instruments. I really don't. I play the guitar and the mandolin.

My son, Walker, has a band called The Dust Busters. You know, he plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, so a lot of my interest in that kind of music comes from him constantly listening to this stuff. He's taught me the history of it. It's remarkable how these young kids are now turned on to more traditional old-time music.

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.

I'll never feel as comfortable singing as I do playing. The mandolin is my real voice. My actual voice is sort of my secondary voice, but I love to do it and I love giving people relief from playing with a little bit of singing.

When they invented the mandolin, it was as if they were trying to come up with the least efficient means of extracting noise from a piece of wood.

I figure I'm a mandolin player first and foremost, and everything else I've accomplished is just a scam.

It's nice knowing we're putting the banjo, the fiddle, the steel, and the mandolin back out front.

I really want to write a novel. I also want to learn to play the mandolin.

I got my first instrument for Christmas when I was three or four years old. My parents got me a mandolin because it was the only instrument that would fit me because I was so small. I went straight from that into the drums when I was six, and then I started playing guitar when I was seven or eight.

I had a ukulele when I was about seven. Then I started playing around with the mandolin and the banjo.

My dad also plays a little banjo and guitar, my mom plays the mandolin.

My grandparents on my mom's side played in a mandolin orchestra. So when I hear mandolins, I automatically think of them.

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 wrote all my songs on my main instruments, and the songs I would record in my bedroom were just acoustic guitar, mandolin, and sometimes bass. I really like the texture the mandolin added to my music, but my fingers were too big to play it... I could only do little riffs and whatever.

One night around that time, at Hammersmith, Bob Dylan was about to go into [his 1963 classic] 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright.He said, 'Hey, Bucky! Play mandolin on this.' I am not really a mandolin player; I could only play in certain keys. Halfway through, he stops the band, turns to the audience and points to me. He says: 'He isn't playing, he's miming.' And then: 'Should I fire him?' The whole audience yells.

I learned how to play mandolin for 'A Mighty Wind!'

Mike Compton knows more about Bill Monroe style mandolin than the Father of Bluegrass himself.

I started playing mandolin when I was three or four years old because I was too small to be playing guitar. As I got older and more responsible with holding instruments, I was allowed to play my mom's guitar that she had.

I really love how the andante from the "A minor Sonata" sounds on the mandolin.

I just naturally started to play music. My whole family played-my daddy played, my mother played. My daddy played bass, my cousin played banjo, guitar and mandolin. We played at root beer stands, like the .Drive-ins they have now, making $2.50 a night, and we had a cigar box for the kitty that we passed around, sometimes making fifty or sixty dollars a night. Of course we didn't get none of it, we kids.

It's very hard to make grand, romantic gestures on a mandolin, and there are times, particularly when playing Bach, that you long for just a little more sustain. But for better or worse it's my voice, and the trade-off comes with increased intimacy. It's like you're beckoning the audience closer: 'C'mere, I've got something to tell ya.'

I'm a farmer with a mandolin and a high tenor voice.

I was two years old when I saw the mandolin for the first time, and I just loved it. I just loved the sound of it, the shape of it even, and the way it looks. And I still love it, which is a testament to something.

I'm a massive tennis fan! I love it to bits. I wish I could play, but I am worried that the muscles required for tennis are sort of in direct opposition to those required for mandolin playing.

It was Vivaldi's Mandolin Concerto, Francesca Abraham realized as the radio alarm went off. Lively, unrelentingly upbeat, it was the perfect tempo in which to start the day. Covering her head with a pillow, she reached out blindly and urgently, desperate to shut the damn thing off.

I also play fiddle, banjo and mandolin.

It couldn't have been more nerdy or bizarre, playing the clarinet. But I studied classical clarinet, went to the high school for music and art in New York City, and then found the guitar and the mandolin after it.

At the age of nine, playing the violin at school, and then onto the mandolin.

My dad's a photographer, and my sister is a writer and a poet. My little brother is a mandolin player - he's a bluegrass musician. It's always been a part of the family.

The Mandolin is the bottom four strings of the guitar, backwards...so a person with dyslexia has no problem learning to play the Mandolin.

You know, I only claim to play three instruments. My dad is a banker, but a drummer at heart; and my mom used to teach piano lessons when she was younger. So I can play some piano, play a little drums, and fake the bass - but banjo, mandolin, and guitar are my thing.

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.'

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.

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.'

You know there's this really strange mystique about Simon and Garfunkel, when they use the amazing mandolin and all the percussive stuff. It sometimes sounds very global.

Of course, eating broccoli raw, nutritionally and aesthetically speaking, is no doubt the best way of all. Raw broccoli makes a delectable salad when sliced into thin strips on a mandolin, marinated in lemon-mustard vinaigrette, then tossed with toasted pecans or hazelnuts, halved cherry tomatoes, and fresh minced basil.

My grandfather played a mandolin, so I got my hands on that. Then on down to a banjo, and I found I couldn't play any kind of soft or mournful music with that so I took up the fiddle in my late 20s or early 30s - and that was far too late. But it keeps me off the streets. It has been a love of mine since I was 17 maybe.

I couldn't have foreseen all the good things that have followed my mother's death. The renewed energy, the surprising sweetness of grief. The tenderness I feel for strangers on walkers. The deeper love I have for my siblings and friends. The desire to play the mandolin. The gift of a visitation.

I play the mandolin, which people don't often expect great things from. But it has it's charms, and it's my voice. I feel like I had as little choice in the matter as I do my speaking and singing voice.

That song has the full extent of my mandolin abilities; I'm not a good mandolin player at all.

Peter was sick of being a pop star, the guitar god, and so he decided to teach himself other instruments. Among the instruments that he picked up was the mandolin.

I was drawing a mandolin, and I made the sound hole very small, which made the mandolin look gigantic. I saw that making the details small made the form monumental. So in my figures, the eyes, the mouth are all small, and the exterior form is huge.

I stepped back from being out front to playing bass. So we started switching: I'd play bass on one song, we'd switch on the next song; I'd play piano... we'd play mandolin.