Bright and early this morning the FedEx truck showed up with a new (to me) Trinity College OM. I've been messing about with it all day and tuned it up to AEAE for this spooky-sounding Lament by Paul Anderson. Actually, it started out as Mr. Anderson's tune but I changed the A part to a different mode, added some drones and left out most of the notated ornamentation. Question. What mode do you get when you change the F to F# in A-minor?
Brent, congratulations on the new addition! It sounds great! I love this piece and the way you're playing it. Wonderful dark mood and tone. Well done!
Adding drones and leaving out most of ornamentation is exactly the way to go with an OM, Brent Changing F to F# changes A aeolian (aka minor) into A dorian. Good choice of character change, too: less passive sadness, more grim determination.
Thanks Ed, Bertram. I got this OM with an idea to encourage myself to work more on accompaniment type playing, something I tend to avoid on the mandolin. When my buddy Lou comes over to play we're like Jack Spratt (who could eat no fat) and his wife (who could eat no lean). I can plays lot of melodies that he can't quite manage but he can toss off your basic chord progression accompaniment like there's nothing to in and I can hardly manage any at all. Of course he's getting better at melody playing so I need to step up my game with the chords and such! The bonus is how this seems to be working out for slow fiddle tunes. I have a good many Laments, Slow Airs, Pibroch and such in my fiddle-tune books that just come across kind of flat on the mandolin. I'd either need to add tremolo or heavily ornament them in order to add some interest when playing appropriately slowly. The Octave Mandolin, even in standard GDAE tuning just totally brings them to life. The sustain is forever, the string spacing is such that I can avoid damping open strings and the overall tone and response is just ideal for slow and especially dark tunes.
Hey Brent, that sounds awesome! By the way, I can totally identify with your quest to play better backup. Sounds like you're off to a great start on it.
One of my fiddle books has a couple of sections with "Raised Bass" tunes, played in AEAE tuning on the fiddle. They provide regular and scordatura notation for each tune. I'm finding I like AEAE on even the Strathspeys and such. For one thing when they're in the key of A you can catch unisons on the 5th fret, D strings instead of 7th fret. It also just brings out the OM resonance so nicely. And the scordatura is like cheating! Speaking of cheating I'm also considering doing it with GDGD tuning, capo 2 to shorten up the reaches even more. Hardly seems sporting on a 520mm scale Octave Mandolin. But if you can shoot fish in a barrel why bother to row the boat, right? I've got one slow Strathspey (in A) picked out that just seems to work awesome. But it's going to take a while to clean it up then I'll try to post a recording.
great, now you've got me wanting an octave mandolin! Sounds lovely!
Jill, Fair enough. When I was keeping my eye out for an OM to come along it was listening to a couple of your banjo recordings that had me thiiiiis close to grabbing a banjo instead.
we're all just enabling each other!!
Congratulations Brent, lovely sounding instrument.....
Here's a Strathspey I'd like to work on the Octave Mandolin in AEAE tuning. http://brenthutto.com/Mandolin/MacKa...cLeansAEAE.mp3 So far it's at about half-speed and the unisons are bodged up by my sloppy fingering. There's a couple drones in there but I still need to work in some more to keep things really ringing throughout.
That's an excellent sounding instrument! I liked your mp3 too. . . .and thanks a whole bunch for getting my acquisition syndrome all riled up.
pickloser, Any time, buddy! Another short clip...
Your having too much fun Brent. The OM sounds good. P.S. I think I commissioned #11 today. Happy Easter to us. Gary
So I'd think it will be an A4? Maybe an A5, they're really nice!
Brent. Mike offered to make me an A5 and put me out of my misery of watching #5. I e-mailed him today to go ahead. Haven't heard back yet. But, I'm sure it's a done deal. Hoping to have another Black Christmas. I've been playing a little GDAD on my OM. Sounds nice. Gary
Brent, the two middle courses on that OM seem to be closer to each other than to the outer courses up the fretboard, while they are all even-spaced at the nut - have you checked the saddle slots?
Gary, This time next year we'll be referring to your place as "Black West". Bertram, Good eye, there were two issues at the saddle. One of the A-course strings was way out of its slot. I know just when it must have happened, one time yesterday that string went far out of tune suddenly and I didn't think to check the saddle slots. Just retuned and carried on. Also with everything properly seated the space between the top two courses is about 0.7mm wider than the other two inter-course spacings. That's just the way the slots are placed. At some point I'll have a thorough setup done. All of the paired strings are far too widely spaced, the top E-string is a little closer to the edge of the fretboard than I like and the nut is just badly slotted and need replacing. Gotta find a decent mandolin technician locally to work it over for me, hopefully without charging half what I paid for the instrument.
I was very surprised to see the string width and to hear about the saddle and nut issues. I know it can be a lottery ordering an instrument unseen (I'm guessing, as it was an online purchase, that is was unseen), but basic quality control should have picked up on these things before it left the workshop/factory. I hope it doesn't cost too much to have it rectified. One of the advantages of buying in person is that these things can be checked over and, if necessary, put right, before the instrument is paid for and taken away. I have to say though that it looks and sounds very nice, in spite of all.
Well I'm the third owner, the instrument is probably a year or so old. But it's the factory nut and saddle or at least look identical to them. The fellow Cafe member I bought it from got the action at the nut down just about perfect. But to do so he had to cut most of the slots so deep that there's a couple of string-thicknesses of nut material above the top of the (buried) strings. So there's a certain amount of stickiness of the strings in slots when they're that deep. And it took him a lot of filing to get them down low enough to keep fretted notes from being sharp. I suspect the odd/uneven spacing at the bridge was indeed there from the factory. That said, the bridge is perfectly fitted to the top. And the fret are, to the limits of my assessment ability with a "rocker", absolutely dead flat and consistently crowned. All in all about par for the course on $600-class factory instruments after someone does a bit of post-factory adjustment. It's hard to complain too loudly given the (used) price I paid and how nicely this one plays and sounds. All solid spruce and maple, reasonably responsive, good geometry at the neck (not always something you can take for granted with factory products) and good fretwork. Basically, the purchase price was so low that the work it needs will end up cost me 1/4 tp 1/3 of what I paid for the OM. But the total bill will still come in under $500 with money left over for a few sets of strings.
Very nice, Brent! Congratulations on the newest member of your family.
