A Tremola - not strictly mandolin

[Ray(T)]

Spotted this - http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-No-Name-Lap-Steel-Tremolo-Autoharp-Instrument_W0QQitemZ300381704446QQcmdZViewItemQQpt ZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item45f02510fe
Although not strictly mandolin related, I thought it might amuse. Dose anyone know how they are played or what they sound like?
Ray

[Tim2723]

That's something the Marxolin company would have come up with in the '20s and '30s probably. There's a lot of variations on these. They produced a number of zither-like instruments intended to be easy to play. Sort of the string version of the Magnus Chord Organ. There was the Ukelin, the Marxophone, the Pianolin, a bunch of these kinds of things. This one, the Tremola, was played by strumming chords (five chords are available on the long strings) while bowing the melody along the edge of the instrument, much like a psaltery today. Note the rosin fastened to the top. That was for the short bow.

Despite the seller's claim, this is most definitely not a lap steel of any sort.

[journeybear]

Sure - To change keys, raise handle of chord shifter and move the shifter until the indicator points to the desired key. Then press handle back into position. Couldn't be clearer. ;)

It looks like a combination chord and melody instrument, and you would set the five chords to the chords you would use most frequently - or perhaps five different chord patterns (major, minor, seventh, and so forth) using the chord shifter as a sort of capo to set the key - and the strings along the "keyboard" area chromatically to correspond to the notes indicated at the left end of those strings, starting at middle C. This seems to be an attempt to take some of the principles of the autoharp to another level; even though autoharps have more chords than this at a given moment (ie, without having to stop playing and change a chord shifter), it takes some doing to play chords and melody simultaneously on an autoharp. I imagine on this you would play chords with your left hand and melodies with your right. It would be a great help to have a manual, eh? But fortunately it is strung, so you could duplicate the string gauges. But thunderation, that is a powerful lot of tuning to keep track of! :disbelief:

[Tim2723]

Ya gotta admit though, JB, that Henry Marx was one of the innovators of his day. I'm not sure he can be fully credited with the banjo-mandolin or the banjo-ukulele as many claim, but he certainly had a big impact on the hybrid instrument concept.

I was introduced to these when my mother-in-law dragged one from the closet years ago. Her family bought it from a traveling salesman (who was the only person to ever get a real tune out of it!). Hers was a zither with a tone bar - like a lap steel - attached to a pivoting arm. It was called a Hawaii-Phone. No one could figure out what to do with it, but it was a cool piece of musical history.

[journeybear]

Yea, this thing could actually be pretty cool, if perhaps limited in use. In the hands of someone like David Lindley, who knows?

I saw Brian Bowers many many years ago play what sounded like something simple on the autoharp. Then he broke it down into its four component parts - chords, melody, harmony, counterpoint - and put it back together again. That was a musical education! I picked up an autoharp at a yard sale a few months ago for less than nothing - the owner gave me a break on some CDs I was getting if I would take it off his hands, honestly :)) - with no strings. When I found out how much a set of strings goes for ... well, now it's sitting here on top of one of my stereo speakers, a display item. ;) This baby is quite the display item, for sure. :) Y'all have got six days to think about it ... :grin:

[allenhopkins]

Is this a tremeloa? If so, it was strummed, not bowed, and the arm held a steel bar, similar to that used on a Hawaiian guitar. You strummed chords on one side, and moved the steel bar to the melody note(s). Reason I ask, is that there are multiple strings on the "fretted" side of the zither, which might be hard to bow a la the ukelin. Here's a demo of a tremeloa being played:

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There were a wondrous variety of zither-family instruments invented and sold, often door-to-door, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I'm not quite sure that the instrument in question is a tremeloa, as the smaller arm set-up pictured doesn't look like the one in the demo. Of course, there could be pieces missing. If anyone's interested in pursuing the strangeness of these mutant zithers, let me recommend the wonderful Fretless Zithers website. (http://www.fretlesszithers.com/)

[Tim2723]

Allen, that is almost identical to my Mother-in-Law's instrument which is labeled a Hawaii-Phone. It kind of makes sense because it has that distinctive slide guitar sound that was a big part of the Hawaiian rage of the early 20th century. That one has a number of melody strings stretched over a printed 'fretboard' (no actual frets) and the pick is attached to the pivoting tone bar. You slide the tone bar up and down over the melody string by pushing and pulling the plectrum. Note the two clips at the top of the instrument that hold the tone bar when not in use.

The one in Ray's post is, I believe, clearly a bowed instrument. If you look carefully you'll see that the melody strings are arranged very much like those of a bowed psaltery and there is a cake of rosin attached to the top. What appears to be a slide mechanism on that instrument is actually an attached capo that changes the key of all the chording strings simultaneously.

The problem is that there exist enough variations of these to fill a museum, and even the authorities argue about variants. The same or similar names may have been used by different manufactures for different instruments, or even for different variations of an idea by one manufacturer. Personally, I'm thinking that the one in Ray's post is a variant of the Ukelin (ukulele-violin) which appears to be one of Marx's more popular instruments. I'm starting to think that neither of these is the original Tremola, but instead a Ukelin (Ray's) and a Hawaii-Phone (yours), or variants on them. Words like tremola, tremolin, tremeola, etc., seemed to get thrown around a lot in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, often having nothing to do with tremolo.

[journeybear]

Nice find, Allen! And yes, Tim, it's different - similar, but different. Even if there are some pieces missing, if I am reading the instructions on the instrument correctly the metal piece under the chord strings is to be used on them, not the melody strings. I think it's supposed to be perpendicular to the strings rather than at that angle; I'm guessing that's how the seller found it. I seriously doubt he know what it is nor how to play it, judging from the listing "Vintage No Name Lap Steel Tremolo Autoharp Instrument." I'm perplexed by the rosin, which does indeed imply employment of a bow, but how one would bow an instrument with so many strings and a flat bridge without producing cacaphony is beyond me. :confused:

Lastly, the label that says "patent applied for" could mean several things. As both of you mentioned that there were numerous variations on such instruments back at that time, I envision small companies producing something like this which were too similar to be awarded patents - or the companies were operating on such small budgets they could actually afford a patent search - or someone had a bunch of wood and strings and posts and tried to make some money by slapping together something like this. I also like the notion of door-to-door salesmen trying to foist these on people who were familiar with zithers or psalteries or autoharps by touting them as the latest development in this type of instrument.

[Tim2723]

The secret of the bowing is no secret, but it's hard to see from the photos. This is where the psaltery comes in.

You don't bow across the group of strings as you do when moving from string to string on a fiddle. Instead, you move the bow along the length of the instrument, bowing each string individually near its hitch pin. Because of the layout, the natural notes occur along the row of strings nearest the edge of the instrument. The chromatic notes are on the row behind them. The whole string plane is at an angle that lets you reach across the front set of strings to the rear ones, and only one string is bowed at any time. Each string produces only a single note, and nothing is fingered. Check out the bowed psaltery videos on YouTube and the technique will become obvious. The instrument is basically a bowed psaltery on one side and the chordal section of a guitar zither on the other. A very clever hybridization typical of Herr Marx.

I think you are correct that the capo bar is shown at a skewed angle. In use it would be perpendicular to the chordal strings. It would not have anything to do with the melody strings at all. It works on a cam principle. You lower the handle to relieve the tension, move it to its next position, flip the handle to engage the cam, and the bar touches against the underside of the chordal strings as a whole group. All the strings are capoed at once.

As to your other question; These were made and sold most popularly during and just after the Depression. At that time in history, I understand it was especially easy for copycats to make a dollar. With so many having so little money to spend in the Court, it was often every man for himself. Any popular, money-making scheme (and box zithers were easy to make and very popular), was fair game to the unscrupulous with little to stop them. Sadly, the zithers as a family are not usually long-lived instruments and few survive intact. They are, by their nature, rather self-destruct sorts of creatures. All those strings on such a fragile frame, you know.

[Tim2723]

BTW, to clarify, the bowed section (on the right of the pictures) would be played with a short bow about 12 to 14 inches long held in the right hand. The chords would be played by strumming the groups of strings to the left with a flat or thumb pick on the left hand. Five chords relevant to a particular key are available. Each chord is made up of four or five separate strings, each tuned to a note of the chord. The accomplished player could strum them in time, or use elaborate rhythms, and even play arpeggios and patterns on those sets of strings.

The capo mechanism would raise every string equally to allow the chords to change with one another. In the first capo position the strings of the C chord would become C#, those of the F chord become F#, and so on. In the second capo position the C chord becomes D, etc.

The bowed (melody) section is fully chromatic and there is no need to change the pitch of any strng nor to capo it an any way.

[journeybear]

Thanks for taking time to write all that. I feel like I'm back in school or something. Learning never ends. ;)

[David Rambo]

Again I'm simple amazed at the wealth of information available on this site. Journeybear is very correct; learning never ends.

[Tim2723]

It's kind of a shame that these instruments fell out of favor. While my own family reports not having pursued it, I understand that the era held a number of very skilled players. Like so many folk instruments, they were pretty easy to learn yet lent themselves to considerable virtuosity. I guess instruments just come and go in fashion. My favorite, the bowed psaltery, saw a brief burst of popularity in the '50s, then nearly died away. Today it's seeing a slight come-back, but nothing like I would have expected.

Are there any other psaltery players here?

[Tim2723]

A slight update:

Ray's instrument (in the link of the original post) is, in fact, a Marx Violin-guitar and not just a variation of the Ukelin as I originally suspected. While it is played like a Ukelin and worked on the same principles, it was considered the pinnacle of their designs and may have been produced as late as 1972! The capo mechanism is called a Capo D'Astra and functions as we thought it would.

The one that Allen found in the video above is a 'Tremoloa', probably built by Oscar Schmidt c.1950, although earlier versions and several variations exist. It is very similar to, but not identical with, the 1930's Marx Hawaii-Phone that my family owns. They also work on the same principles.

I just think these things are cool!

[Ray(T)]

Rather than a Marx Violin-guitar, it looks to be one of these - http://www.fretlesszithers.net/QuickIdentifierPages/Pianolin.htm
- with thanks to the "fretlesszithers" site, a "Pianolin". The painted keyboard is something of a giveaway.
Ray

[journeybear]

Looks like we have a winner! Now we know what it is, and how it is played, though we still don't know how it sounds. I can imagine, though ... :mandosmiley:


BTW: "Recent sale prices: Between April 2001 and August 2001, 12 Pianolins/Pianoettes received bids on eBay. The average of the high bids was $36.78. 2 other Pianolins/Pianoettes received no bids."

So at $9.99, something of a bargain.


This is something completely different but also called a pianolin, playing one of our favorite tunes:

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[Tim2723]

Ray, check it against the Violin-guitar here:

http://www.fretlesszithers.com/mvg.html

The Pianolin (Pianoette) is similar. Heck, a lot of these things look pretty much the same. The pianolin is also a psaltery/guitar-zither combo. Check the photo against the E-Bay listing carefully. The devil is in the details.

Allen's Tremoloa is the second type shown here:

http://home.dejazzd.com/williams/QuickIdentifierPages/Tremoloa.htm

[journeybear]

And here are the details:

1) The Marx Violin-Guitar is the only one of these instruments with that rosin holder;
2) The "keyboard" on the seller's instrument is identical to the Marx Violin-Guitar, including the black angled section and "patent applied for" statement, and its slight angle to the side of the instrument;
3) The location of the instructional strip above the "keyboard" is also identical, starting between B and C;
4) The distinctive Chord Shifter is identical, down to the placement and types of screws.

But yes - there are a lot of similarities!

I did also see at that website the "banjolin" zither that came under discussion on another thread recently.