My 2002 Left-Handed Mid-Missouri Mandolin

Ironically, when I first started wanting to play a musical instrument as a 32 year old left-handed adult, one of the reasons I chose tenor banjo over mandolin is precisely because I could not name a single tenor banjo player. There was nothing in the way. Whereas for mandolin there was Jeff Austin, Sam Bush, Ronnie McCoury, Norman Blake, and David Grisman standing in the way. All of whom better than I would ever be so what's the point of even trying, right? 

Tenor banjo was a clean slate. There was no one to feel inferior to. Secretly, I also knew that learning GDAE tuned "Irish" tenor banjo was kind of a stealth way of learning mandolin since both instruments are tuned the same way. Of course I would later learn about 4-string banjo players such as Elmer Snowden, John Carty, Angelina Carberry, Kieran Hanrahan, Kevin Griffin, Don Vappie, Cynthia Sayer, Manny Sayles, and Eddy Davis. Not quite the same though as I hadn't spent countless hours listening to or going to see these musicians play.

I did eventually get it in my head that I wanted a mandolin. In fact, I've gotten this in my head off and on several times over the last 19 years. I've stupidly ordered and subsequently sold more instruments than I'd like to think about. One mandolin that I should have held on to was a 2014 Redline Traveler pancake, frying pan, Army/Navy style flat-top mandolin that I bought new from Steve Smith. I regret getting rid of it. So after years of not having a legit mandolin, I couldn't pass up buying a used, "vintage", actual left-handed, side-dots and everything, Mid-Missouri mandolin that I happened to see for sale online. 

Mid-Missouri mandolins are now called Big Muddy, but it's the same thing. These have always been made by luthier Mike Dulak, although I think now his son or nephew is starting to take over the build process. It's a simple flat-top, folk-style mandolin design that works well for Irish or old-time music and has remained mostly unchanged for many years. I reached out to Mr. Dulak and he confirmed that mine is from 2002, based on its serial number. It's an M-O model which I believe means it was made with mahogany wood back then.

To be honest, at first I didn't love it. It felt narrow, cramped, and hard to play, but that was because I was coming from the longer scaled tenor banjo and my fingers and brain just were accustomed to the shorter scale and double course strings. The intonation was off and I had a hard time getting the two A-strings to sound like each other. It also has some significant pick wear from the previous owner as well as a couple dry cracks. I almost re-sold it but decided to keep it and have a local instrument repair tech set it up for intonation, action, and a new set of tuners. I found out about Rubner tuners and bought the most inexpensive tuners they offer for A-style mandolins. That was the upgrade it needed.

Famous last words, but I don't think I want (or can afford) any other mandolins at this point. Mandolin is still a secondary instrument for me, as I want to always primarily identify as a tenor banjo player. But it's nice to have as an option to play at home and bring along to sessions. It's awesome to have found a used, made in the USA, real wood Mid-Missouri mandolin that was actually originally made to be left-handed, rather than a righty to lefty conversion. And after playing it a while, I don't think I would have wanted the custom wider neck that Mike offers as an option. The standard mandolin width is just fine. 

Something I might want in the future is a mandola that I could tune DAEB instead of CGDA. Speaking of instruments that I've had and stupidly gotten rid of, I once had a Sawchyn Beavertail mandola that I barely played and then sold off. If only it had occurred to me that these could be tuned DAEB. I also once had a custom made Fletcher tenor guitar but sold it as well. Dumb. Fortunately my Kala tenor guitars sounds almost as good to my ears for one-tenth the cost. But that's another story.

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Silverleaf Travolin Travel Mandolin

Luckily I was home this morning when my Travolin mandolin by Silverleaf Instruments arrived a day early!  The Travolin is a high quality travel mandolin made by Steve Hallee in Maine.  Mine is a custom 4-string left-handed version (normally they have 8-strings just like a regular mandolin).

For reasons unknown I woke up this morning wanting to learn the Monty Norman song Under the Mango Tree from the James Bond movie Dr. No.  When the Travolin was delivered I had just about gotten the tune of it so Under the Mango Tree was the first thing I played on the Travolin.  That islandy song seems well suited to this instrument.  Here's an overdubbed recording I made today with the Travolin as lead melody, my Romero tenor banjo for the chords, and a metal scraper on a metal patio table to "approximate" the sound of a snare drum.

This 4-string version of the Travolin is 20 inches long and 5.5 inches wide.  It has a scale length of about 13.25 inches.  It's the best feeling, sounding and playing travel mandolin I've had, and the most compact.

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Travel Mandolin by Robert Collins (Tin Guitar)

4-string model in maple and spruce

The idea of a travel mandolin might seem unnecessary because mandolins are already small and can usually fit into the overhead bin of an airplane with no problem.  In my case I play GDAE-tuned "Irish" tenor banjo but no longer owned a mandolin.  Since it was going to be used primarily for travel, I wanted my next mandolin to be one specifically designed with that in mind.

After some research, I reached out to the English ukulele luthier Robert Collins of Tin Guitar in Hebden Bridge, United Kingdom because I liked the design of his travel mandolin. I placed my order in March of this year for a left-handed 4-string model in maple and spruce: maple for the integral neck/body and spruce for the top, with a walnut center stripe down the neck for both looks and reinforcement. The neck is carved into something of a "V" profile to give it more of a mandolin feel, compared to the flattened D profile of Rob's uke necks.

Tin Guitar 4-string Travel Mandolin Size Specs:
Overall length = 21.25"
Lower bout = 6"
Upper bout = 2.75"
Body depth = 68mm
Scale length = 14"
Nut width = 30mm

Sound Sample:

The strings it came with are light gauge, D'addario J62. Note: single course light gauge mandolin strings can be sharp to uncallused fingers. Playing it some more will help me with that. I chose the 4-string model mostly for minimalism (it shaves an inch or two off the length and cuts down on neck weight) but also because it mimics the number of strings on a tenor banjo. This mandolin will fit into a soprano uke gig bag. 

There’s no truss rod, but Rob says tension shouldn’t be a concern. Being a relatively short neck in hard maple and with the walnut skunk stripe as well, the neck is pretty strong and with 4-strings it's only handling 50% of the tension that a regular mandolin would take, so GDAE tuning is fine.

My overall impression is that it is an efficient, well-conceived, minimalist design...crafted with the same care and attention to detail that I imagine all of Robert Collins' instruments must receive. It's hard for me to find a flaw. As you can hopefully hear from the sample above it has a pleasant sound that exceeds expectations for such an instrument.

Neck and body sides are integral

Curly figure on back

Walnut skunk stripe on neck

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Practicing a Two Bar Section of the Haitian Meringue La Douceur

There's a tune I've been learning called La Douceur.  It was written by the Haitian composer/violinist Arthur Duroseau who was part of the Duroseau musical family from Port-au-Prince who made some recordings in the early 1950's.  La Douceur is a Meringue type of tune.  It has some syncopated timing that takes some getting used to and a seemingly difficult sequence of 8th notes at the end of the B-part which can feel very sped up when compared to the rest of the piece.

I wrote that two-bar lick out in the notation form that I have recently adopted which uses major scale note numbers which can then be applied to any key or tonal center you want.  See image below.  The note numbers correspond to the notes of the major scale.  This morning I was practicing that lick in the key of B, which means that my note "2" is a C# note and 2b (flat 2 or "doo" for diminished two) is the note C in the key of B.  With this kind of notation it's pretty easy to transpose.  All you have to do is know a major scale and then apply that knowledge to the sequence of notes.  After I'm done writing this I will try it in a different key.

La Douceur "lick" at end of B part

Michael Doucet recorded La Douceur on the 2013 BeauSoleil album From Bamako to Carencro.  Here's a link to that recording.  The lick starts just after 50 seconds and is only a couple seconds long:  https://soundcloud.com/airshowmastering/beausoleil-avec-michael

And here's a video of the amazing banjo-mandolin player Dennis Pash of the Etcetera String Band and the Ragtime Skedaddlers playing it.  Dennis' version is where I first heard La Douceur and it made me want to learn this tune!  The section transcribed above starts at about 33 seconds into this video.



Remember, this method of notating is not like a tab or treble clef anything like that.  The numbers correspond to major scale notes, not finger placement, so it's not instrument specific or key specific.  You can use this notation system for any melodic instrument....saxophone, flute, guitar, mandolin, et cetera, and you can use it for any mode.  A tune in Dorian would probably have 2 as the tonal center.  Makes sense, right?

DGDA and ADAE Tunings (Mandola and Tenor Banjo)

Mandolas are basically just slightly bigger mandolins with a scale length between 15.5" and 17" - so about 12 to 25 percent longer than a mandolin scale, which is typically 13.875".  A mandola is usually tuned in 5ths like a mandolin, but that 5ths tuning is CGDA instead of GDAE.

I recently got a mandola with a 15.5" scale.  I was going to tune it CGDA, but then I was reminded of a chapter in Enda Scahill's Irish Banjo Tutor on Alternate Tunings where he describes tuning a tenor banjo ADAE instead of GDAE.  (Note: the Irish tenor banjo's standard GDAE tuning is one octave lower than the mandolin's GDAE tuning).  Purists beware, ADAE is the way Enda normally tunes his banjo!

Tuning an Irish tenor banjo to ADAE simply involves tuning the 4th string (lowest string) up a whole step from G to A.  On a mandola this would equate to changing the CGDA tuning to DGDA.  I've found out that DGDA is the way Marla Fibish tunes her mandola, and maybe John Doyle as well.   I'm willing to give it a shot!

Enda Scahill

In his tutor Enda Scahill describes several advantages of this alternate tuning, and below I have paraphrased some of these while translating it to mandola-oriented language.

Advantages of DGDA tuning

DGDA is almost an open tuning of D or G.  By playing the A note (fret 2) on the G string or the B note (fret 2) on the A string you play either a 4 string D chord or G chord.  This allows the instrument to resonate more in tune with itself.

The stretch to that pesky low F# (Fret 6 on the low string) is now only a stretch to Fret 4.

The G note on the low string is now at Fret 5 instead of 7.  This allows for fiddle style double G “chording” (open G played with G on the low string).

Tuning the low C up to a low D creates opportunities for droning on the open string.  This is a big advantage for the key of D (the key that most Irish tunes are played in) and for the key of G (arguably the 2nd most common tonal center in Irish traditional music).

The DGDA tuning affords different (easier?) chord formations new found harmonies and voicings.

Tuning up to D tightens the tone and the action by creating more tension in the string.  In other words, you can use a lighter string but still achieve more tension.  This results in the 4^th string being not as twangy, heavy or loose.  (This feature has perhaps more relevance among banjo players tuning up to ADAE from GDAE).

I'll add to Enda's list by saying that this alternate tuning makes the mandola even more of a unique, hybrid instrument.  The interval from the 4^th string (D) to 3^rd string (G) now becomes a perfect 4^th (like on a guitar) instead of a 5^th, yet you still have the interval of a 5th between the other strings.

In this altered mandola tuning you can't quite transpose and use the exact same fingerings you've memorized on mandolin...you have to make adjustments for any notes on the low string.  But, overcoming obstacles and finding advantages in what at first might seem like an unnecessary challenge is all part of the fun of playing an instrument and growing as a musician!

Baron Collins-Hill's MandoLessons site and Patreon page

Baron Collins-Hill

Have you checked out Baron Collins-Hill's MandoLessons site?  On it he's posted quite a few fiddle tunes, including Bill Cheatham, Cooley's Reel, Blackberry Blossom, Swinging on a Gate, Spotted Pony, Road to Lisdoonvarna and more.  Each tune has a video where he plays the tune and then breaks it down phrase by phrase.  Baron encourages you to learn simply by watching the video and using your ear, but he also provide pdf mandolin tabs for the tunes on the site.  The MandoLessons are absolutely free - at no cost to the end user.  However...

Associated with his MandoLessons site is a Patreon page where for as low as $1 a month you can become a Patron and help support his MandoLessons initiative.  Patreon is kind of like Kickstarter, but instead of helping fund a one-time project, Patreon allows you to help sustain an artist's ongoing work by contributing at a "name your price" level on a monthly basis.  On Baron's Patreon page he offers varying incentives to Patrons who donate $5, $10, $15 or $20 or more per month.  For example, Baron will give the next five donors at the $10 per month level a one on one lesson in person or via Skype or Google Hangout.  I took him up on this and really enjoyed the lesson and the generous amount of time Baron spent with me.

Baron's YouTube channel is even more extensive, with a wide selection of 150+ fiddle tunes in a variety of styles including Irish jigs and reels, oldtime, Quebecois and Cape Breton, Scandinavian, contradance tunes, original compositions and more.  I particularly like his videos of the tunes Road to Malvern and a special version of the Irish tune Morning Star in F (usually it's in G).

Baron is one half of the instrumental duo Velocipede (check out their album here) and is also a regular instructor at the esteemed Maine Fiddle Camp.  His partner in Velocipede, fiddler Julia Plumb, also has a pretty nifty YouTube profile with some fiddle instruction videos and she also teaches at Maine Fiddle Camp.  As a recent fan of their music and teaching style, I can tell you that Baron and Julia are two young traditional musicians to watch out for!

The fact that Baron's MandoLessons site is free is a great thing, for sure.  It provides a resource for those on a tight budget to learn more about playing music.  Although, if you can afford to make a contribution, you might consider becoming a patron to help support this great work he is doing.  Even at $1 or $5 a month you're helping make a difference without breaking the bank!

Do You Find Your Instrument or Does Your Instrument Find You?

I must really, really love playing melodies.  This is probably why I’ve gravitated towards fiddle tunes, Irish trad and other instrumental folk music.  I had a broad, hungry and obsessive taste in music long before I ever decided to play an instrument, so the fact that I’m pretty much only interested in playing fiddle tunes and folk melodies has come as a bit of a surprise.

I listened to a lot of Grateful Dead and Phish in my 20’s, and this sponge-like nucleus of sound spawned pathways toward jazz in the form of Miles Davis, Medeski Martin and Wood, Bill Frisell and Grant Green, toward the bluegrass/Americana of Norman Blake, Hot Rize, New Grass Revival, Yonder Mountain String Band and John Hartford, “No Depression” style alt. country ala The Flatlanders, Wilco, Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt, undefinable instrumental bands such as Tortoise, Laika and the Cosmonauts, and Sound Tribe Sector 9, singer-songwriters like John Prine, Gillian Welch, Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle and Townes Van Zandt, contemporary rock bands My Morning Jacket, Dawes and Dr. Dog, “new” classical ensembles and composers Uakti, Bang on a Can Allstars, Terry Riley and Steve Reich, roots-fucking reggae in the form of Culture and Augustus Pablo, progressive acoustic instrumentalists including Bela Fleck, David Grisman, Akira Satake, and Leo Kottke, and trippy bands like The Meat Puppets, The Flaming Lips and Ween.

I name checked all these cool groups and musicians simply to demonstrate where I might have been coming from when I first picked up an instrument (tenor banjo) 8 years ago, back in June, 2006.  Note that NONE of the music I liked up to that point is what you would call Irish or oldtime, except for maybe Norman Blake.  

I assumed that I’d be wanting to strum chords and sing John Prine, Neil Young and Grateful Dead covers, but I didn’t enjoy that at all.  (Maybe the fact that I hadn't chosen a guitar would have been an early indicator.)  Then I was introduced to some fiddle tunes like Arkansas Traveler and Silver Spear and I was hooked right away!  It probably helped that tenor banjo was an instrument more suited to picking melodies than accompanying songs, at least to my ears. 

Tenor banjo was my first choice, primarily to be different, but I wonder if I inherently knew that it was the right choice at that time?  Now that I’m kind of switching over to mandolin, the world of music is continuing to open up - both forwards and backwards.  

I still am all about playing melodies but as I continue to work on developing my ear, there’s the opportunity to learn a portion of a Phish jam or a riff from a Medeski, Martin and Wood composition, for example.  Not everything from my music listening past will lend itself to this treatment, but anything you can whistle you can play on mandolin.  I also want to be open to any influence this old favorite music might have on the interpretations of traditional music.  It's all the same language.

Playing mandolin is definitely going to continue to dictate the type of music that I play.  The mando's consistent, standard tuning of GDAE, coupled with the fact that it's fairly easy to play in any key, as well as its melodic range and friendliness toward melodic notes, allows for me to broaden my search for tunes to all the corners of the globe where music is part of a cultural tradition.  

My Interview with Marla Fibish: The Pulse, The Flow, The Sound of Irish Music on Mandolin

Marla Fibish has been part of the San Francisco Irish Music scene for three decades now.  Over that time, she has become one of the most prominent players of Irish mandolin, contributing to the instrument’s growing acceptance within the trad community.  Marla teaches privately and at music camps such as Lark Camp, Swannanoa, and Portal Irish Music Week. 

So far, I’ve taken three Irish mandolin lessons from Marla Fibish on Skype.  After the last lesson I had the opportunity to do an interview/conversation, which allowed me to pick Marla's brain on some Irish mandolin related topics.  It was very enlightening.  A transcription of Marla’s comments is below.

Marla Fibish

Most common thing Irish mandolin students are in need of learning:

(MF) It's almost always the right hand (picking hand).  It has to do with a focus on picking out a melody and thinking that the right hand is only used as a mechanism to execute those melody notes.  Whereas, I take a very different approach.  What I want the right hand to be doing is creating a bed of rhythm and to be steady in that rhythm, and then the left hand can overlay the tune on top of that bed of rhythm.  

The mandolin is a picked fiddle, in a way, so our role in Irish music is to play the melody but we have to do it in a rhythmic way.  We have to focus on the right hand so that we can get those notes to come out in the pulse of Irish music.  It's that hand that creates the pulse, just like a fiddler who will say it's 90 percent in the bow.  For us it's the same way, but most newer players are not focused there.  They're focused on the left hand.

Scales and theory analysis vs. just playing the tunes:  

(MF) I used to believe that the tunes will teach you everything, and I still believe that for the most part.  But, over the thirty-something years I've been playing this music the tunes have shown me this structure that's lying beneath them.  Once that gets revealed, it's a valuable part of what you're learning.  

The more tunes you know, the deeper your understanding of the underlying structure of both the music and the instrument.  You can super-impose that knowledge or you can get it from the tunes themselves, or both.  People learn in different ways. I learned it from the tunes, but I've learned to recognize things that can maybe help others learn it a little faster by giving some surrounding information. 

The mandolin's strengths and limitations:

(MF) You can play to your instrument's strengths and you can turn your instrument's limitations into stylistic strengths.  Limitations of the mandolin include attack and decay.  We can't produce a single, sustained tone that doesn't decay over time.  So, we turn that into stylistic punchiness.  At the same time we want to minimize that limitation as much as possible.  I'm always harping on getting that sustained legato tone as your default.  To the degree that you can get that, the limitation disappears.

Playing Irish music on the mandolin:

(MF) With the mandolin we want to sound like we're a part of what this music is supposed to sound like.  We don't want to sound different.  We are playing Irish music on this thing that people haven't been playing Irish music on for very long and that the music wasn't built around, and there isn't this whole tradition of technique that goes with how to play the tunes on this instrument.  

We want to get the pulse, the flow and the sound of the music.  It's never going to be exactly with the same bits and pieces and ornaments and turns that a piper could play, or a fiddler could play, or somebody on one of the core instruments, if you will.  So we're doing a little bit of interpreting as we go to get the feel of the music.  That's our first job and then we can start to bring new things in.  

Bruce Victor and Marla Fibish

Playing in first position:

(MF) Staying focused around the offerings and the harmonic possibilities of what the first position gives you stays truer to the feel of the music as played on instruments that it's been played on for much longer.  You pick up cues from hearing the open strings on a fiddle.  Those are landmarks.  They are important inflections.   They are part of the style.  

The goal is not to be able to play that tune anywhere on the instrument and strip it of those cues to its fundamentalness.  It's not about just stringing those notes together anywhere one can. When you take a tune and you play it in a closed position somewhere else on the neck you're taking away those resonances that are rooting the tune in a certain harmonic structure of a key. 

I am all for moving tunes into keys that bring out something wonderful in the tune on the instrument on which it is being played.  But part of the beauty of a tune in a particular key comes from how its melody is organized relative to the 4 open notes of the instrument - how ringing open strings create drone notes - where string crossings fall in a melody, creating fluid lines against resonating notes.  The goal, then, for me, is not to be able to execute technically perfect uniformity across keys, but rather to embrace the differences that arise from a change in key -- the relationships between the open strings, the notes of the tune, and the resonances and overtones of the instrument that unfold when that tune is played in that key. 

First tunes learned:

(MF) I remember learning Tripping Up the Stairs before I even knew it was a jig.  I didn't know what a jig was but I remember playing it and thinking it was the prettiest thing I had ever heard.  I probably learned a lot of the same first tunes that people learn now, like The Blarney Pilgrim.  

I learned Loftus Jones very early on.  That's an O'Carolan tune that I learned off a Mick Moloney recording.  He was playing it on the mandolin so his interpretation of it made it very accessible to a new player.  I still play it.  I still love that tune.

Playing in a certain style:

(MF) Typically styles have been considered to be regionally based.  I had a conversation with Martin Hayes once where he was saying that regional styles came out of personal styles.  There would be an iconic player and people would start to gravitate toward that person's style and imitate it and play like him or her.  And of course those people that played like him lived near him, so over time you have a regional style.  

Those things happen not only within regions of Ireland but also within regions of America, where players who play in a certain style have come to this country and a generation or two goes by and you have a Chicago style or a New York style or a Boston style or a San Francisco style, based on the players that settled in those areas.

San Francisco, where I learned to play, was influenced by players who came from the west coast of Ireland, Clare and Galway, so we have a west coast style here on the west coast, which is rather poetic I think.  I've been told that I play in somewhat of a Clare style.  It wasn't intentional on my part.  I'm playing music with the flow from the session community that I learned to play in.  

Joe Cooley and Kevin Keegan were the figures that sort of started the revival of Irish music in the San Francisco area.  I kind of learned from the people that had learned from Kevin Keegan and Joe Cooley.  Not a particular person, but from the sound of the session at the time.   

On "hacking around" at accordion:

(MF) I've never spent the time or attention that I would need to ever get good at accordion.  It's a whole different ballgame than the mandolin.  It's physically fun to play.  To have sustain.  To be able to make a note and have it get louder over time.  It's like wow, I never had that!  But I have not spent the disciplined time with the instrument that I would need to really call myself a box player.  I hack around at it and it's fun.

About Noctambule (NAHK-tam-byool) - the duo Marla has with her husband Bruce Victor:

(MF) Bruce is a guitar player.  He plays in open, tunings, different tunings, and likes to swap strings around to get nice, lovely textures on the instrument.  The thing that we love to do is set poetry to music.  It's something that I've done intermittently for 25 years or more and now we're writing together and having a blast at it.  

Travel in the Shadows is a theme album.  We noticed that we had a whole cluster of songs that were based on poems that were about the night, so it's built around that theme. We perform together as a duo and that's my primary thing other than playing and teaching mandolin. 

Instrument Review - Red Line Traveler Mandolin and Blueridge BR-40T Tenor Guitar with sound samples

Blue Ridge BR-40T and Red Line Traveler

Red Line Traveler Mandolin
I've had my Red Line Traveler mandolin for a little over three weeks now.  It features a spruce top, mahogany back and sides, a special snake head shaped peghead, chrome Grover tuners, an adjustable truss rod, a Cumberland Acoustics adjustable bridge, radiused fretboard, and came strung with D'Addario J73 strings.

The Red Line Acoustics brand Traveler mandolins are made just outside Nashville, TN by Steve Smith of Cumberland Acoustics and his small shop team.  The mandolins are modeled after the old World War I Army-Navy "pancake" style mandolins, with a flat-top and rounded body.  Steve has upgraded this classic design by adding a truss rod, radiused fretboard, different bracing and his trademark Cumberland Acoustics bridge.

Mandolin and Tenor Guitar Sound Sample - Over the Waterfall

These oval hole Red Line mandos are symmetrical.  Steve had a couple unclaimed ones in the build process, so he took the one I chose and finished it up as a lefty.  It took about 2 months total from the time I first contacted him until I was holding the instrument in my hands!

The Traveler has a good amount of volume and what I would call a "sweet" tone, probably due to the mix of mahogany and spruce.  I haven't had any setup done at all and can't really tell that it needs any.  Eventually I might have someone give it a once over, but it was very playable right out of the case it was mailed in!

As I now listen to these recordings made this past Thursday, a little over 3 weeks after receiving it, I am very impressed at the sound I am hearing (not only does the mandolin sound good, but as someone who took up mandolin in January of this year the person playing it doesn't sound too bad either! I had played tenor banjo for a few years prior which certainly helps with mandolin.)  For a hand made mandolin in the less than $700 price range, you can't beat the Red Line Traveler.

Blueridge BR-40T Tenor Guitar
My wife Laura has been backing me on tunes using a baritone ukulele tuned DGBE, like the 4 highest strings of a guitar.  She uses a pick to play and this works great for around the house, but when she takes it to an oldtime jam it's easy for the baritone uke to get drowned out by the fiddles and banjos.  And forget about taking it to most Irish sessions - the baritone uke is still a bit too foreign to be openly accepted in that environment.

Mandolin and Tenor Guitar Sound Sample - The Boys of Tandernagee

So, Laura wanted an instrument with more of a guitar-like tone that she could still play the same as the baritone uke she was used to - same chord shapes, strumming, 4-strings, et cetera.  A tenor guitar strung up DGBE was the obvious choice.  "Tenor guitar" may be a bit more accepted in trad music circles because noted Irish players like John Carty, Brian McGrath and Eamon Coyne have used a tenor guitar on some recordings, not to mention its history as a backup instrument in Texas style fiddling.

The Blueridge BR-40T kind of has a corner on the market of tenor guitars.  There's the Gold Tone model, but it gets poor reviews, and then there's the Ashbury line - out of the UK but made in Vietnam - which has some good feedback but there isn't as much information on.  The BR-40T stood out as the best choice.

The BR-40T is pretty much a copy of the classic Martin 0-18T tenor guitar.  It has a 13.5" lower bout, a 10" upper bout, is 3 7/8" deep, has a nut width just over 1.25", has a 23" scale and is 35.25" inches in overall length.  It has a solid spruce top and a laminated mahogany back and sides.  The neck joins the body at the 14th fret.  The neck has more of a rounded tenor banjo shape to it than a typical guitar neck.  The vintage style tuners seem to hold.  There's an adjustable truss rod and a radiused fretboard.

For an instrument made in China, the Blueridge is very well made and playable.  Laura had it checked over by John Gonzalez of Fan Guitar and Ukulele the day after it arrived in the mail and he only had to do some minor adjustments.  It comes strung up with strings for CGDA tuning, but John set it up for DGBE tuning with D'Addario Phosphor Bronze EJ26 strings.  There were a couple cosmetic blemishes, probably from when they were filing down the frets in the factory - common on instruments from Asia - but John was able to lightly sand those down so it's not noticeable.

Mandolin and Tenor Guitar Sound Sample - Julianne Johnson

Laura says the size of the tenor guitar makes it very comfortable for a woman or a person with smaller arms or hands.  It's definitely louder than a baritone uke with more sustain and achieves that guitar-like tone she was looking for with better than expected results.  The sound samples featured here were recorded on her first day of playing it after it had been setup, so the sound could open up even more once it's broken in.

In summary, the addition of a mandolin to my tenor banjo as well as the addition of tenor guitar to Laura's baritone uke gives us a wider combination of sounds to choose from when picking and strumming tunes.

Any Tune's A Good Tune: My Interview With Old Time Mandolin Player Curtis Buckhannon

In the ongoing search for albums that capture that old time mandolin sound, I came across the Buckhannon Brothers' 1993 CD Little River Stomp.  On that collection of old time mandolin instrumentals, mandolinist Curtis Buckhannon, with his brother Dennis on guitar, run through 25 tunes ranging from rags and Celtic, to Scandinavian and Southwestern, and of course a healthy sampling of tunes from their home state of Missouri.

Rather than sounding like crossover music or a jumping across styles, there's a consistency to the album as Curtis and Dennis impart the modest qualities of the old time folk musician regardless of a tune's origin.  Upon hearing this broad, well chosen selection of melodies I just had to find out more about mandolin player Curtis Buckhannon and learn how and why he draws from these far reaching sources.  So I interviewed him!  Below is a transcript in Curtis' words.  I hope you enjoy reading.

L to R: Curtis Buckhannon, Vince Corkery and Dennis Buckhannon

Definition of Old Time

(CB) The type of tunes I play are all pretty much fiddle-based tunes either from different cultures or American based tunes.  Pretty much everything I do has been played on the fiddle.  I like to interpret it on the mandolin.  

Any tune's a good tune.  I even do some Tex-Mex things.  There's some neat stuff going on in the Southwest with the tunes.  Cleoffes Ortiz knew so many unusual tunes - stuff I had never heard before.

I've always had a wide taste in music.  All my life I've listened to classical, to jazz, to blues.  More or less (my repertoire) might just be an expression of my likes in music, rather than standard old time music.  It all seems to fit on the mandolin. Then I get my brother playing on it and it's like wow this is fun!

Musical Influences

(CB) My earliest influence is Kenny Hall and the Sweets Mill String Band.  I fell in love with the way he played.  He didn't just play old time music. He did a variety of things.  

I've always loved ragtime from the get go.  It's fun to play rags on the mandolin.  The Etcetera Stringband were so scholarly about the music - so knowledgeable about it.  That very first Etcetera Stringand record was one of my best finds ever.  It was a running joke between me and a friend that we have to learn all those tunes on that record and I think we came pretty close to learning all of them.  

Blues - I've always liked Martin, Bogan and Armstrong (Carl Martin, Ted Bogan, Howard Armstrong), the black stringband from Tennessee.  Those guys came to St. Louis one time and I was just blown away by them.  They were amazing.

Fiddlers Chirps Smith (Volo Bogtrotters), Gary Harrison (Indian Creek Delta Boys) and Geoff Seitz (Ill-Mo Boys) are the source for a lot of my tunes.  And Marc Rennard.

Playing Style and Technique

(CB) I play without a lot of flashiness and just let the instrument try to shine through standard old styles of playing.  The style that I play falls into the category of old time mandolin - I don't know what else you could call it.

Kenny Hall played a lot of open chords and I tend to do that sometimes, but I'll also go up the neck and maybe do some crosspicking things to back up a tune or song.  You've got the option of tremolo.  I do a lot of double stops.  I try to be as creative with it as I can.  I try not to play the same tune the same way every time.

It's not that I'm doing it just to stretch me.  I just do it to keep my interest in the tune and to make it fresh every time.  I might embellish something more one time than I did the last time I played it.  I'm constantly finding things out about music each time I play it. There's always so much to learn.  I like to do a lot of the fun things with the rhythms - getting the syncopation, playing on the off beat.

I don't use my pinky that often - I mostly play with three fingers.  I do use the pinky once in a while, but it's not employed as much as most people use it.  I'm thinking about cutting it off - I don't really need it!

Process of Learning A Tune

(CB) I feel like if a tune strikes me as memorable then it has some quality of staying power, if not at least with me then maybe others.  So, when I hear a tune I become fond of I'll stew it over in my mind a few days or weeks and then try to figure it out.  And lo and behold it seems that the groundwork done in my head is sufficient for me to work it out.  I'll get on the mandolin and 9 times out of 10 the fingering just comes right to mind.  That's how I learn tunes usually. 

If a tune really sticks with me it'll be going around in my head and I'll be whistling it to myself.  I have a friend who plays fife and drum music.  His mother plays fiddle and he plays fife. They have a tune Hell on the Wabash.  It's like a march.  A hypnotic modal tune. I just had to work it out.  It fell right into place and has become one of my favorites here lately.

If you've been playing long enough it'll come to you easier.  The more you play the more similarities there are in a lot of tunes....in the positions and nuances.

Playing with his Brother, guitarist Dennis Buckhannon

(CB) When Dennis and I are working on tunes I'll come to him with a tune I've learned and he'll figure out the chords from me just playing it.  He ends up coming up with some brilliant stuff and 6 out of 10 times he hasn't heard the recording or who I learned it from and he'll just get right onto it.

Dennis accents me.  Without him I wouldn't be half as good as some people like to say.  I can play somewhere without him and it doesn't sound near as good.  He knows where to put everything - note wise, chord wise and rhythm.

He's a year older.  Growing up we played together all the time, and then we just discovered old time thanks to County records.  They were putting out a lot of good stuff.  My dad had a collection of old bluegrass records.  We've always had some rural roots in our family and it just felt like the kind of music we should be playing anyway.  It just seemed natural.  It seemed to fit.  

Playing with a Fiddler

(CB) A lot of times I just do what the fiddle is doing.  Sometimes I accent what the fiddle is doing, maybe do a harmony or just back off and play some chords.  In some ways playing with a fiddler gives you more freedom because you're not the lead instrument - you can do little things here or there and the fiddle is still carrying the melody.  But for the most part I just play the melody.

Playing By Ear

(CB) There's something to be said about playing by ear.  There's also something to be said about those that can read music - their repertoire is bigger.  I've always played by ear so I am limited to what I can learn when others that can read are not.  

When I first met the Etcetera Stringband they were playing downtown at the old Lafayette Park Bandstand where Sousa played one time.   I played some of their tunes for them.  They read music and were mystified by how we did it by ear.  It's just how we did it.  We didn't have a choice!

Being Self Taught

(CB) I'm self taught.  My brother started playing guitar when he was younger than I and then I started playing guitar.  In the early 70's during summer vacation from high school me and my brother and a friend went on a trip to the Smoky Mountains.  We went to this little amphitheater concert and there was a guy there playing mandolin - doing fiddle tunes on it and it just enthralled me.  I asked for a mandolin for my birthday that fall and ended up getting one.  Been playing it ever since.  That would have been 1973.

I still like to play guitar. I like the old finger picking stuff - just noodling around on it. I listen to more guitar music than mandolin music.  I stumbled upon Mike Dowling - he plays Delta style guitar and has a record called Bottomlands. I could listen to that 24 hours a day.  I never get tired of listening to it.  I love the old blues players like Lightning Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, Fred McDowell.  I love classical guitar, Django Reinhardt.  I could listen to him forever too.

It seems like I'm always finding out something different about music every time I sit down to play.  With that in mind it could be encouraging or discouraging.  I'll never know everything I want to know about music, but I like to think that it's encouraging.

Curtis Buckhannon is available for lessons to those in the St. Louis area. To learn more about the Buckhannon Brothers, visit thebuckhannonbrothers.com or write to P.O. Box 6165, St. Charles, MO  63302-6165.  Their CDs are also available from County Sales.  

Playing Mandolin and Playing Irish Music - Widening and/or Narrowing the View

One thing I love about Irish music is the openness with which it has accepted new melody instruments over the last several decades.  A wide variety of different instruments are used to interpret these timeless melodies, including fiddle, flute, whistle, accordion, concertina, tenor banjo, uilleann pipes, guitar and yes mandolin.  It's as if the tune exists independent of the instrument used to bring it to life.

One thing I love about the mandolin is the wide variety of genres that it can be used for.  I just got Don Julin's Mandolin for Dummies book and in it he goes over old time, ragtime, blues, bluegrass, Irish, Brazilian Choro, Italian, Classical, jazz, "Dawg" music, and more.  The mandolin has found a home in each of these styles.

It's true that there are certain things you need to know about playing an instrument - in this case mandolin - regardless of what genre or style you want to play.  Then, at a certain point if you want to become really specialized in one particular style, such as Irish, you have to really focus on techniques specific to that way of playing and purposely not let other elements seep into your chosen style.

While Irish tunes - the jigs, reels, slides, hornpipes, barn dances and so on - are among my favorite things to play, there's no way I could ever limit myself to just those Celtic tunes.  There's too many other great numbers which fall under the broadly defined "old time" umbrella, as well as the melody lines from popular songs, that are also fun to play and learn.

So, I'm down with playing mandolin, as well as with playing Irish music.  Those can the same thing or different things.  

The Mandolin in Old-Time, Jazz, Celtic, Bluegrass and more

Tenor banjo, which is the instrument I’ve been playing until now, seems to have two extremes.  At one end you’ve got the jazz guys – players like Eddy Davis, Cynthia Sayer, Elmer Snowden, Buddy Wachter and Tyler Jackson.  At the other end you’ve got the Irish tenor banjo players such as Barney McKenna, Mick Moloney, Gerry O’Connor, Enda Scahill, John Carty and Angelina Carberry.  There’s not much tenor banjo in between.

Enter the mandolin world, however, and you can find examples in almost any genre.  For jazz there’s Dennis Pash, Jethro Burns, Tiny Moore and Jamie Masefield.  In old-time you’ve got Norman Blake, Kenny Hall, Clyde Curley and Carl Jones.  Notable Celtic mandolin players include Andy Irvine, Mick Moloney, Marla Fibish and Luke Plumb.  Progressive/Newgrass guys start with Chris Thile, Mike Marshall and David Grisman.  I’d also like to mention Danny Knicely and Sam Bartlett, two additional favorite mandolin players of mine that I would characterize as eclectic.

Dennis Pash (middle) w/ Nick Robinson (L) and Dave Krinkel (R)
The Ragtime Skedaddlers

Clyde Curley (middle) with George Penk and Sue Songer

Marla Fibish w/ Jimmy Crowley

Danny Knicely of Furnace Mountain Band

I could have listed many more players (Tim O’Brien!) in many more styles (Italian!), but that gives you the idea.  It may not be as ubiquitous as guitar, but mandolin is certainly a more conventional instrument than tenor banjo and if you want to find mandolin influences you don’t have to look that far in any direction, even rock (Jeff Bird of the Cowboy Junkies). 

Mandolin’s versatility and playability ensures that you can have a lot of fun with it, whether you choose Bach, Bill Monroe, Brazilian Choro, or something of your own devising.  In addition, the discussion forums at Mandolin Cafe and Mandolin Hangout ensure that you'll have an interactive support group to bounce ideas off of.

Luke Plumb Mandolin and Bouzouki Albums on Bandcamp

Now that I'm starting to play mandolin, I'm on the hunt for inspiring mandolin recordings.  This brought to mind Luke Plumb, the forward-thinking mandolin player for the Scottish band Shooglenifty.  I have a couple of Shooglenifty's CDs from a few years back, but the last time I looked for any of Luke's solo work the only things I could find would have had to have been shipped from overseas.  Nothing was streaming or downloadable through the usual sources.

When I searched again today I was pleased to see that this has changed.  Some time in the last year perhaps, Shooglenifty created a Bandcamp page where you can stream and download not only several of their more recent albums, but multiple side project releases as well, including Luke Plumb's A Splendid Notion and Wintering Out albums.

A Splendid Notion features Luke on mandolin and James MacKintosh on percussion.  Celtic mandolin with percussion may not seem like a good thing, but I urge you to check this out.  It works really well.  The track titles may be unfamiliar, although several of the tunes did sound familiar even if I can't quite place them.  Some liner notes would have been helpful, but A Splendid Notion is still one of the few quality recordings I've come across that features mandolin front and center.  Stream A Splendid Notion here.

Luke Plumb takes on more of a backup role on bouzouki on Wintering Out, his 2002 album with fiddler Simon Bradley.  I had long wondered what this album sounded like and today I got to find out.  It's not as mandolin-centric, but is still a delight to listen to.  Fiddle and bouzouki may be a more traditional combo than mandolin and percussion, but the tunes on Wintering Out actually sound less familiar and slightly more worldly.  Stream Wintering Out here.

Fiddler Aonghas R. Grant also has a solo album on the Bandcamp page (The Hills of Glengarry), if you're up for a wee bit of Scottish fiddle music.

Holding the Mandolin – A Beginner Looks At Fretting Hand Placement

How do I grip the neck…where do I put my thumb?  Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!!

After a half-dozen blissful, ignorant years of playing tenor banjo, I am starting to learn mandolin.  It is harder than I expected!  Sure, the mandolin tuning is the same as the “Irish” GDAE tuning I use on tenor banjo but the different fingerings means that I am having to unlearn some tenor banjo things that have become second-nature.

On tenor banjo I employ a cello or guitar influenced finger placement of one finger per fret – with finger 1 (index finger) covering fret 2, finger 2 (middle finger) covering fret 3, finger 3 (ring finger) covering fret 4, and finger 4 (pinkie finger) covering fret 5.  If you need frets 1 or 6 you just slide slightly out of position to reach those, and in lieu of playing fret 7 you simply play an open string whenever possible.

With the shorter scale of the mandolin, you'd think the stretches would be easier, but you end up having to splay the fingers out a lot more.  On mandolin the fingering assignments call for finger 1 on frets 1 and 2, finger 2 in charge of frets 3 and 4, finger 3 responsible for frets 5 and 6, and the pinkie finger on frets 7 and 8.  Because you can theoretically reach all these frets in first position, with mandolin you should be able to play melodies without the use of open strings. 

I’m struggling with getting my fretting hand into a comfortable position on the neck while still being able to reach all of the necessary frets with the proper finger.  My mandolin teacher has me practicing 4 different mandolin finger position combinations/stretches.  (I’m using fret 2 as my starting point for the example below, but these can actually start on any fret on any string as long as you keep the whole/half step spacing consistent.)  

Pattern	Index	Middle	Ring	Pinkie
1 and 5	Fret 2	Fret 4	Fret 6	Fret 7
2 and 6	Fret 2	Fret 4	Fret 5	Fret 7
3 and 7	Fret 2	Fret 3	Fret 5	Fret 7
4	Fret 2	Fret 4	Fret 6	Fret 8

Finger patterns 2 and 6 are pretty doable, but try to simultaneously place your index finger on fret 2, middle finger on fret 4, ring finger on fret 6 and pinky on fret 7 (patterns 1 and 5), or index finger on fret 2, middle finger on fret 3, ring finger on fret 5 and pinky on fret 7 (patterns 3 and 7) or index finger on fret 2, middle finger on fret 4, ring finger on fret 6 and pinky on fret 8 (pattern 4). 

Pretty tough stuff, and it seems to be the most difficult on the lower strings.  It’s hard enough to get your fingers into these positions in the first place, but try lifting them off the fretboard and then putting them back in the same place.  OK I'm signing off now to go work on this for like the next thousand hours.