Five course instruments

[steve V. johnson]

In the 'unison of octave' thread, JPL mentioned that, in choosing an instrument, he was wondering not only about stringing but about whether to get a four- or a five-course instrument.

So I hope to de-lurk some of you five-course players (dare I call it a 'cittern'?)
to tell JPL and the rest of us about the five-course world. As I wrote in the other thread, I don't 'get' how to play a five-course instrument, but I know folks who do, and I've heard some of you make some fantasically beautiful music on these things.

Sooooooo......

To the questions in the sub-subject line, I'll add some more:

How do you tune it? Octave or unison stringing? What string gauges?

What mechanical/physical details does a new 5-course player need to know?

I'm sure there's lots more... Maybe there are other threads (pretty likely) on this stuff that can serve as an 'intro' or 'primer'...

Thanks!!

stv

[Martin Jonas]

I have five courses, but only nine strings: my cittern is a vintage 1925 German waldzither which has a single-string bass course, 17" (43cm) scale length. I string it with normal mandolin gauges for the top four courses, plus a single 0.056" string, and tune to GDAEA, an octave down from mandolin, all unison. It's very much shorter scale than most citterns, which means that it's relatively straightforward to use mandolin fingering and that makes playing tunes easier than on an OM or bouzouki-scale instrument.

I find the fifth course handy for three purposes:

1) I can go up to the high D in first position without ever going above fifth fret, which is handy for tunes.

2) The second A course greatly adds flexibility for double stops and chords, especially as many mandolin chords are more dificult to finger with the slightly longer scale.

3) Drones in A and D fit in really well with many Scottish tunes and are easy to add by hitting the open strings while playing tunes. A growling G drone from the bass string also fits many tunes, and leaves four full courses above free to play the tune.

Martin

[zoukboy]

Depending on the tuning you are using you can approach a 5 course like an augmented 4 course, say, GDAd bouzouki + a low C or D string, for instance, or GDAd + a high g or a string. I started on a short scale Sobell tuned GDAda and it was great for all the reasons Martin mentioned. I played in that tuning for the first 10 years. Later, when I got a long scale instrument from Stephen Owsley Smith, I transposed those same intervals down a 4th to get DAEAe and worked with that for about 10 years. Both tunings offer a lot of flexibility, particularly DAEAe - by capoing you can get in a lot of unusual keys, either for playing with flat pipes or singers, plus you can get some unusual sonorities for solo playing.

Another approach is to use a more "open" tuning like DADAd or GDGdg (same intervals) or EAEAe or GCGcg (again, same intervals). These will yield really different results and they each have their strong points and weaknesses.

About 3 years ago I became really taken with the sound of 4 course instruments for the first time, and I have since sold off my 10 stringers. My advice is to go for the *sound* that inspires you, whether 4 or 5 course, and then figure out how to play it. I suspect that thinking too much about it at first instead of simply looking to be inspired might be counterproductive.

[rclepper]

So I hope to de-lurk some of you five-course players (dare I call it a 'cittern'?)

NO, ANYTHING but THAT!! I feel my arm twisting...

I tend toward the 5-course instruments. Maybe it's because I come from a guitar background. Most of the time I end up playing it more like a 4-course bouzouki, though. I refer to my 5-c's as bouzoukis more often than not, thogh I'm not averse to calling it a cittern (shhhh...).

I tune my main instruments DGDAD. I gravitated toward this tuning I think in part because I play primarily Irish traditional music and a lot of ITM players use GDAD-based tuning, and because I come from a fingerstyle DADGAD guitar background and it's like a dyslexic DADGAD for me. I play a lot of melody and for that I end up mostly in the GDAD territory, occasionally plucking the low D for accent with the pick while at the same time picking one of the melody strings with my middle or ring finger. I also play some fingerstyle 'zouk, in which case I use the low course much as i would in a DADGAD guitar arrangement.

For accompaniment I use the low course more, depending on whether I'm the sole accompaniment or not. If there's a guitar or other 'bottom' already, I play countermelody and only occasionally walk down there. If no other bottom, I sometimes play lower two- and three-finger chords up and down the neck on the bottom courses.

Most of my instruments are around a 23" scale, which I find works well for melody yet has enough of a longer 'zouk sound to satisfy me anyway for accompaniment (lots of countermelody). My main instrument is a 22.8" (580mm i believe, to be more precise...) early 80's Sobell 5-course. That fraction of an inch is worth a lot to me when playing melody.

I've also experimented with some of the augment-the-4-course-at-the-other-end tunings: GDADA, GDADG, GDAEA, GCGDG. Of these I prefer the GDADG/GCGDG tunings -- the former because it gives me the same interval between the last two courses that DGDAD does, so i keep the same horizontal motion but without the vertical, if that makes sense. The latter is just DGDAD up a fourth (as if capoed at the fifth fret). I would use these tunings more if I had another shorter scale instrument besides the Sobell to leave in that tuning (Steve is now saying 'yeah, right, like you need another instrument!!...').

I play occasionally in DADAD too. I know Aaron Jones (another 5-courser...) uses this tuning primarily when with the 'Dogs for accompaniment. I like it for melody for tunes in A or for some DADGAD-like arrangements. However i don't like shlepping around yet another instrument for gigs and haven't a zouk stable enough to tolerate retuning between tunes on stage (is there such a thing?).

I tune unison courses, mainly for intonation. I like the sound of octave courses, but have enough trouble dealing with intonation issues on the unison course instruments.

The other reason I find myself playing the 5-courses more is that besides playing primarily ITM, I also play in an eclectic hammered-dulcimer-centric band called Hammer On!. There I use the zouk mostly for accompaniment for a wide variety of musical styles where it's helpful to have a wider range to work with.

Randy

[steve V. johnson]

Randy!! 'Bout time you showed up and aired yourself out here! LOL!!

Folks, he "tends to" these things like... Dude do you even have a four-course instrument?!?

He's got some real gems, all five-course.

Now I'll read the rest of your post... <GG>

stv

[steve V. johnson]

I walked into a darkened hotel dining room in Dublin, Ohio, to find Randy and Aaron Jones (of Old Blind Dogs) duetting on two of Randy's, the Sobell and a Nigel Forster, and it blew my little zoukie mind. I have never heard anything else like it.

They were taking turns 'leading' and chording and it was absolutely sublime. I learned more about the five-course in that short time than I ever imagined I could, and I continue to learn from Randy, who is my window to the five-c world.
Aaron was having a lot of fun because he said that the OBD tunes are Scottish, rocking and mainly in A, and require him to play driving rhythms, so the more eclectic and intricate stuff he was playing with Randy was really fresh for him. A return to his roots, I think he said.

Splendid.

Thanks!!!

stv

[Avi Ziv]

Steve,

In last year's CBOM-a-rama, Steph brought a 5-course Sobell. It was superb - perhaps my favorite instrument there...although there several other Serious contenders. It wasn't immediately comfortable in my hands (wider neck) but the tone - oh that tone!


Edit: Here is a link
showing the Sobell in the back

Avi

[Steph]

As Avi points out, Sobell's tend to have wide necks and the combination of that and the extra course made it difficult for narrow neck/4 course players to get make much sense of it in the time span of the get together. The tendency was for most folk to lean towards the guitar sounding (to me) flat/induced arch tops. I think Dion's Spira (pin brige) was the most popular but as Karen's Dean was tuned ADAE most struggled with that as well. I've never owned - and hence don't play guitar, so melody was always my bag, 5 courses made sense to me as it made the high a and above easy (tuned GDAEa) to get to and gives a different ring when you drone the open high string. Now if only I could play the damn thing.....

[Sam price]

Has anyone got a favourite link to five-course instrument chord shapes?

I'm building a 630mm scale length cittern, and I'm worried with my small hands, it may be difficult to play. The nut will be 46mm, so it ain't that wide...might just use the bass string as a drone.

Thanks for reading this.

[JPL]

Sliabhstv, thanks for starting the new thread.

There is no shortage of different approaches in the world of CBOM, is there? Four or five course, short or long neck, unison or octave, straight fifths or variant or open tuning...

[steve V. johnson]

Hey JPL,

You're most welcome! Great fun, ain't it? Woo hooooo!

I'm excited to see some responses to that question about the 5-c chord shapes!

Thanks, all!

stv

[Martin Jonas]

There's a nice little PDF guide to chord shapes (or rather to how to make your own) for five-course instruments tuned in fifths at the TAMCO website here.

Martin

[Mike Buesseler]

My head hurts thinking about alternate tunings to GDAE,let alone another set of strings!! (Hijacking alert!!) How do you people get your heads around more than one tuning? Seems like whenever I try this, I go stupid(er), and can't find anything where it is supposed to be...

[steve V. johnson]

Ooh, oooh, I just remembered! Chord House! A nice website here:

http://www.looknohands.com/chordhous.../index_rb.html

It has a guitar neck (noooow, stay with me here!) diagram with dots, and you can choose to have it display chords or scales,
and with a pretty large and sophisticated list of presets for extended chords and all manner of scales. The neck pic can be set up with bass on top or bottom, left- or right-handed, and a bunch of other parameters can be adjusted too.

And, you can modify it all, from the way the pic is set up to making your own extended chords, wild scales and alternate tunings, too.

So, for zouk stuff I set the picture up as GDADDD, my zouk tuning with two 'dead' D courses, then dial up the chords and scales I want to learn about. When I have the info on the screen, I take a screen shot of the information, then I open the screen shot in PhotoShop and just cut away the two dead D course, and zap! I have a four-course page picture. I printed some of them to put in a small notebook for practice, but mostly I just open the .jpgs that I have saved. I don't think you can save what you develop there to the site, and that's why I devised the screen shots method for saving 'em.

Modifying this for a five-course instrument will be a breeze.

I expect that there are other sites out there somewhere that are really for five-course chording, and I'm looking fwd to learning about 'em.

stv

[Sam price]

Great stuff!!

I'm gonna look at all these!!

Thank you.

[Eric Selinger]

Speaking of five-course instruments, anyone have any experience with, or thoughts about, the Moon 5-course Irish Bouzuki/Mando Cello/Octave Mandolin on the classified right now? (Tuned CGDAE, it seems; asking $950.)

[PseudoCelt]

I haven't seen a 5-course, but I've played several 4-course Moon bouzoukis. All were well-built, played easily and sounded great.

When I was looking around for a zouk, I narrowed it down to either a Moon or a Fylde archtop. In the end, I got a good deal on a Fylde, so I went for that, but I would be happy playing a Moon.

I'd like a 5-course bouzouki with a guitar body, tuned DGDAE. If I ever decide to go for it, I'll probably get Jimmy Moon to build it.

IIRC, someone else on the board also has one of these 10-string Moons and posted his opinion on it.

Patrick

[Eric Selinger]

Thanks, Patrick! I'm torn between this Moon and a Mid-Mo OM; they're close in price, so it's really about the instrument itself. (Of course, there's also that Fylde mandola on the classifieds... Argh! Too many options, and not enough $$!)

[PseudoCelt]

Both the Moon and Mid-Mo have good reputations for sound and build quality and I suspect that you would be happy playing either...

Patrick

[Yavor]

Greetings-
Well, I've owned the Mid-Mo, and the Moon 5 course should
be on it's way to me today (yup, I snagged it from the list).
(sorry!)
I can tell you that the Mid-Mo OM is very well made. They are now re-named big bear mandos or something like that. The Mid-Mo has:

a very light body -no problem though
Excellent fit and finish -perfect
The best playability of any OM I've played (weber,petersen)
(action and neck are just wonderful)
balanced sound -bass to treble
excellent value
Low volume.

OK, it is perfect if you play by yourself, but it can't hold up to a guitar or accordion. Maybe one soft guitar....

I loved the instrument, but I play with a tuba and accordion. (Gypsy music). I now play a petersen. The Weber
sage was also not loud enough...almost. It also just felt bad in the hands.

So, I hope the Moon is a good performer. Moon has a great reputation. We shall see!

Bob - Hot Springs

[Eric Selinger]

Congratulations, Bob! Enjoy the Moon, and thanks for the review of the Mid-Mo!

[steve V. johnson]

Mid-Mo's are now being made again under the name Big Muddy, by the original builder, Mike Dulak, in Missouri.

And Mid-Mo's can be made louder with some nut/bridge/tailpiece mods, and choices of strings, too.

stv

[Uath]

Improziv,
I posted your picture on my computer as wallpaper. I'm a seventh grade teacher. Here's the responce...
"Who's the old guy? Is he related to you? What's that weird thing he's playing?" Just thought I'd let you know, you have fans in Georgia.

[Uath]

Just to let you know... Never ask a seventh grader how old you look. I had one convinced the other day that I was this young teacher's grandfather. The young teacher is 34, I'm 47.

[jmcgann]

Just to let you know... Never ask a seventh grader how old you look. I had one convinced the other day that I was this young teacher's grandfather. The young teacher is 34, I'm 47.

My buddy asked his grandmother (92) if the feeling of things going faster as you age slows down at some point.

"Oh, honey, it seems like every 15 minutes I'm having my breakfast!"