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There seem to be quite a few balalaika orchestras around the country. You might look fo one in your part of the country. One played at the library where I work in Virginia. Some of the members came...

Lemon oil furniture polish is good for fret boards. That might at least mask the cologne smell if it doesn't eliminate it.

Mike

I love seeing beautiful things like this brought back from the dead. Great work!

Mike

Rob, I just downloaded your ebook. Thanks so much for making it available especially since its free! It has enough good ideas in there that it would be worth paying for. I thought I had a good idea...

Four string tenor banjos are usually turned in fifths. CGDA is standard, but GDAE, an octave below a mandolin, is often used for Irish traditional music.

A tenor banjo or tenor guitar would have lower tension. Usually tuned CGDA like a mandola. There's a bit more of a stretch when playing chords. I enjoy plectrum banjo but that has a completely...

Beautiful rendition of this tune! I love the Cantigas, but I'm not familiar with that one.

Mike

That looks really elegant. I may have to try it.

Mike

That has a nice sound.

She is almost certainly playing a tenor tuned GDAE, like an octave mandolin. You may know but lots of Irish tenor banjo players use a shorter scale, 17 fret, design to make playing reels etc. easier...

I tuned my citole to CFCF which is close to an F power chord. Easy to make a full F or C from this. This tuning is also easy for melodies.

I think the dog got close to a fresh paint job!

http://www.colonialtonewoods.com/ is just up the road from me He has a good selection of nice top wood.. He was kind enough to give me a couple of pieces of spruce for a project I was working on.
...

Yes, it was a very enjoyable concert! Fortunately I had the "cheat sheet" above that listed the composers as they didn't always announce them. Also nice to see a couple of familiar faces there and...

Beautiful!

Giving this thread a bump, the concert is going on now http://www.ustream.tv/channel/blackerby-live

StewMac sells ebony replacement knobs for Waverly tuners. http://www.stewmac.com/SiteSearch/waverly%20mandolin%20tuners.html

Audacity works pretty well and its free. You have to manually separate the tracks, but it is a decent editor and has lots of filters if you want to use them.

Mike

Gorgeous! I don't know if this is your first instrument or not, but it's very nice work.

There is a lot of great Renaissance music out there. Much of its freely available online. Look for composers/publishers like Thoinot Arbeau, John Playford, Thomas Ravenscroft, and Michael Praetorius...

I've made a citole, inspired at least by Paul's site. It still needs some finishing, but since I strung it up I've had a hard time putting it down. Many instruments in the middle ages seem to have...

Something like ethafoam would be ideal. Its a semi-rigid closed cell foam that's chemically inert. The next best thing might be a closed cell foam camping pad, available at big box discount stores...

Great tip about cutting off the first fret space. I'll check the math but it sounds much simpler than slotting my own frets.

Stewart MacDonald has slotted fret boards too. I don't know how they...

Lawrence Wright's excellent article on the citole and gittern also discusses the mandora. http://www.jstor.org/pss/841364 Its not freely available unless you have an institutional membership. An...

Thanks, those are good links. I've also seen the facsimile edition of Playford but can't remember where.

Most of the tunes I've gotten from abcnotation.com. There is a complete collection of the...