Hispanic citterns

[lucho]

From what I understand, very few in this list know much about the other pre Sobell citterns that are used in folk music in the iberian peninsula and Latin america, and how they relate to the older citterns, as well as its potential to be used in celtic music as alternative to the always expensive and difficult to get british celtic style citterns.... #Has anybody tried laúd tenor, cuatro puertoriqueño or bandola?.

Lastnight I shot one photo for most of my collection of short scale citterns and I wrote a few lines about them in my blog. I play with them mostly celtic and other traditional music, and sometimes I use alternate mandolin like tunings for them such as GDAEA for example.... has anyone tried that? #
my hispanic citterns (http://festivalpo.blogspot.com/2006/07/hispanic-citterns-in-americas.html)

[Arto]

Great post - thanks Lucho! The variety of plucked string instruments is impressive, and I´m sure their use in different styles of music outside their "home tradition" is still largely uninvestigated path. I have been interested in Portuguese guitars and bandurrias (don´t own one, yet).

I was yesterday looking at a Djangobooks video below. Interesting stuff - especially because the music is anything but fado, and the artist is playing with a flat pick instead of the traditional two fingerpicks:


Fapy Labertin on Portuguese guitar (http://www.djangobooks.com/archives/2005/08/28/fapy_lafertin_portuguese_guitar.html#000341)

(sorry, the name is Lafertin)

thanks, Arto

[Martin Jonas]

Fitting to this topic might be another cross-reference to the pictures of my Waldzither (http://www.mandolincafe.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=15;t=35342), which is the German variation on that theme. Like the instruments posted by Lucho, these are eminently suitable for use in Irish and Scottish music, at a small fraction of the price for a new "Celtic" cittern and with a great vintage tone.

Regarding Lucho's tuning of GDAEA, I have tried that on mine and it works fine, but as I mostly play tunes, I prefer GDAEB and keep it all in fifths. There's a nice discussion of using Waldzithers in that tuning for Irish music at thesession.org here (http://www.thesession.org/discussions/display/6139/comments). Being able to use a capo on the fifth fret and ending up with a standard mandolin on the top four courses is a big plus.

Martin

[kww]

I play an inexpensive Mexican mandolin variant, the tricordia (link in my signature). I'll post pictures of mine someday. It's a decently made instrument, with laminate back and solid top, about the size of a soprano ukelele.

[delsbrother]

I've heard of Filipino Rondalla groups that have mandolin sections. One of our members is in one... Perhaps he can share some ideas about cross-pollination.. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

I know there's also a mandola used in rondalla, but I don't think it's related to the mando-family's mandola..

As to playing latin instruments in a Celtic context, I know Seamus Eagan of Solas will occasionally play tres, but I don't know how he tunes it.

[Steve L]

The late Tony Cuffe used to play a tiple on occasion on his solo records and with Ossian I believe. Not sure what tuning he used.