by any other name

[billkilpatrick]

alex just gave me a tuning for my charango that makes it possible to play music written for the mandola (g-b-e-a-d.) #it's also a banjo tuning, i note.

it's wonderful. it makes the instrument sound halfway between a lute and a mandolin.

at what point, however, does my charango stop being that and become a mandola or a banjo? #if i were to use a renaissance tuning on my oud, would that make it a fretless, renaissance lute?
does an instrument get its name from the sum of its parts or is it
tuning or its shape that makes it what it is?

i posted this in the general discussion section but got no response. i'm really curious to hear any comments.

- bill

[Bob A]

I suspect an instrument is defined by inherent structural realities. The fact that of all the guitars I own, maybe one is in "traditional" Spanish tuning doesn't make the rest of them something Other.

There are structural limits to tuning variations as well. You can try to tune a mandolin in CGDA but you won't like it much, and it won't last very long.

I suspect that so-called standard tunings are mere conventions, necessarily adhered to for the most part, but variation is allowed, even encouraged, in the more folkish traditions. Think of the Appalachian dulcimer, whose melody string(s) are re-tuned to change the mode. Aeolian, Myxolydian, Dorian, all at the turn of a peg - until that fateful TWANG necessitates replacement.

Until the charango goes classical you are free to tune it however you wish, and enjoy the benefits that flow therefrom. ANd call it what you will. I'm reminded of the fellow who posted a tale about being in Italy, I think, with his F5. A lovely young thing asked him what it was. When he replied "a mandolin" she laughed at him. We all feel his pain.

[Jim Garber]

Even in the "classical" repertoire there is scordatura, tuning in a non-standard manner. I have a number of tunes from the tunr of the century where one string of a pair is tuned to a non-standard note.

Jim

[pklima]

Nomenclature isn't terribly important, but I'd say as long as you change nothing about your charango except the strings it remains a charango. If you were to, say, replace the bridge and nut so it could only be strung with four courses of two strings it might become a charango-mandola hybrid or an unusual taropatch. Don't worry about it becoming a banjo - as long as the top isn't a skin or plastic head it's quite safe from that dreadful fate.

[Eugene]

In this case, I think the back is a skin...with hair and probably ears, eh?

[billkilpatrick]

certainly not!...mine is a critterless charango.