In einer eMail vom 21.10.2006 23:43:20 Westeurop=E4ische Sommerzeit schreibt [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
> For fretted stringed instruments it seems the construction factors that > give the best result are: general body shape and back and bridge > construction. That gives us three families relatively common in western > music: > Frank, I very much renjoyed your rant!- In my opinion, you're right about construction factors being useful for categorisation. But I would go farther back, and focus on the caracteristics of specific components, e.g. back, bridge, outline, peghead, string material, by themselves. Not as "family features". And, with respect to mandolins, I would regard another criterion as being even more important: playability! If I learn the piano, I can sit down at any piano and play it. If- I learn the guitar, I can take any guitar, tune it and play it. The converse of this is, that if I've only learned the guitar, any instrument that I can immediately tune and play is a guitar. As it happened, I cut my teeth (musically and - almost - literally)- on a Stridente Neapolitan mandolin.- When I later got to- play a friend's vaulted-back, flat-top German mandolin, I could play it right away. Later, I got a banjo-mandlin, and could play it right away, too. A while ago, I wanted an electric mandolin, and the best bargain was an east European Waldoline model with pickip. Again, I could apply all I knew about mandolin playing. Then came a Roman mandolin (embergher tuners, extended fingerboard)-- again nothing new! I even borrowed an American archtop mandolin recently and played all my stuff on it with no bother. For me as a player, these instruments are all mandolins, because they play the same. The four double wire courses with the same string length and GDAE tuning define the mandolin for me.- As I see it, they're different implementations of the resonance body for those four wire courses. One is lute-type (Neapolitan/Roman) one is cittern-style (Waldoline model), one is a variation of that (circular-pattern vaulted back) one is banjo-style, one is fiddle-style (archtop). As I see it, "my" instrument, the mandolin, which started out as a lute-built instrument, has "borrowed" features from the citterns, from the banjo, and (in the case of flatbacks) from the guitar. I do not believe that this makes one of my mandolins a lute, the other a cittern, the other a banjo and another a guitar. My view is that of a contemporary folkie. I do not consider the "mandolins" that the ancient music people play (6 gut courses) as the same instrument as mine. Chiefly because I would have to learn them before I could play them.- Hope this helps, and doesn't spread more confusion! Cheers, John D. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
