Oddball stringing
While cleaning out the instrument closet I unearthed the old Kay mandolin that I bought off a street hippie for $15 about 20 years ago. Suddenly having a "spare" mando, which had been out of sight and out of mind for several years, I decided to try some experiments with octave stringing.
Putting higher octaves on the two lower strings seems pretty natural, kind of like some OM stringings, only an octave higher. But I decided to try octaves on all four strings -- higher octaves on the two low strings and lower octaves on the two high strings, thus: G4-G3 D4-D5 A3-A4 E4-E5 (what the heck, the instrument is plywood...) I dubbed it the "H-tuning". This gives a lot of seconds on the open strings, and I was curious whether everything would sound like a cluster chord.
To my surprise, I found the sound not nearly as "avant garde" as I had expected, but quite folky. Simple major/minor chords gave a sound almost like a mandolin being doubled by mandola or OM. More complex chords like 7ths, diminished, 9ths etc., were gnarlier, but still much more conventionally "harmonious" than I had expected. The effect is interesting enough that I may just do some recording with this tuning, in combination with a mando in standard tuning, and see what results.
I'm curious as to whether anyone else has tried this kind of stringing, or other oddball stringing on a regular mandolin?
Dr H
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"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry." -- John Cage
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