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Thread: Why courses?

  1. #1

    Default Why courses?

    Hey, this is probably a really stupid, "no-duh" newbie question, but it's been bugging me and my viola-playing friend for a while. What's the point of having courses on an instrument? How does it benefit an instrument, like the mandolin, if it has 4 pairs of strings instead of just 4 strings? Does it make the instrument louder, or spread the tension of the strings more evenly on your fingers when you push it onto a fret? And then, why does it seem that most electric mandolins have 4 strings instead of 4 courses?

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    Registered User sunburst's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    The slightly-out-of-tune beats of the paired strings add to the sound of the mandolin and make it sound, well, like a mandolin. Those same slightly-out-of-tune beats on an electric mandolin, with it's sustain and loudness, can sound, well, out of tune, so many electric mandolins have single strings rather than doubles... and they sound a lot like guitars through an amp, when you get right down to it.
    Double strings also make some plectral techniques, like tremolo, easier and smoother.
    As for loudness, I regularly set up mandolins with only four strings when I'm making a new nut or setting up a new bridge, and they are almost as loud with four strings as they are with 8, and some are just as loud.

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    Mediocre but OK with that Paul Busman's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    They're extras, in case you break one... ;-)
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    It makes the tremolo sound smoother. Thats the biggest thing. Single string tremolo always sounds kind of lame to me.
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    Studies dead guys. Mandoviol's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    The two strings add sustain to the instrument so that it gets more sound/volume for its size. And as Paul said, they're extras in case one snaps--something I have had to deal with several times already. Also, it makes tremolo louder (so far as I can tell).
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    Seems that everyone missed the most obvious. Twice as many strings plucked is twice the amount of mass set in motion, i.e., twice the energy. Twice the energy in the motion of the strings results in more force exerted on the body of the instrument, in turn resulting in greater amplitudes of the body motions. In plucked string instruments, you need all the amplitude you can get. Even guitars at one point were strung with five double courses. Less desireable tonal characteristics ultimately caused that configuration to be abandoned in guitars (I never have been a fan of the sound of 12-string guitars), but the double courses stuck in mandolin family instruments.

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    Registered User sunburst's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    Dave, in my post above I said "As for loudness, I regularly set up mandolins with only four strings when I'm making a new nut or setting up a new bridge, and they are almost as loud with four strings as they are with 8, and some are just as loud."
    Whether or not it's twice the energy exerted on the body, I just don't hear a big increase in loudness with all 8 strings. I was kind of surprised the first time I did that, but that's the way I hear it. Especially, chop chords seem just as strong with four strings.

  11. #8

    Default Re: Why courses?

    And chop chords might be easier to play with just 4 strings!

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    Mando accumulator allenhopkins's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    Must be some advantage to double strings on the mandolin, or wouldn't the mandolin have evolved similarly to the guitar -- going from double to single-string courses? The old double-strung guitars weren't tuned like 12-strings, with "octaved" courses; they were tuned like mandolins, both strings in a course tuned to the same pitch. I had always thought that the double strings were to achieve more volume -- just a greater "mass" of strings in motion, as Dave C states -- but if John H is correct, and there's no volume advantage to the double-string courses, why aren't some builders making four-string instruments that sound comparable to the "traditional" eight-strings? Easier to tune, less expensive to make and to maintain, and just as good-sounding?
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    Quote Originally Posted by allenhopkins View Post
    Must be some advantage to double strings on the mandolin, or wouldn't the mandolin have evolved similarly to the guitar -- going from double to single-string courses?
    To toss one more theory in the pot (although I think it's mainly just cultural inertia)... double course strings are more comfortable under your fingertips.

    Strings tuned to this pitch range, in gauges that are loud enough to play with other instruments, are pretty stiff compared to guitar strings because the scale is so short. Just try doing a guitar-type blues bend, and then wipe the blood off the strings.

    Fiddlers can use a softer string and lighter touch on single strings, because the bow drives the strings for volume, and they only have to press onto the fretboard, not depress the string past the point of fret contact.

    I was introduced to the "cheese slicer" effect of single strings when I got my 4-string acoustic-electric mandola, with string gauges heavy enough to get a decent acoustic response as well as drive the pickup. Flatwounds help a little, but it will never be quite as comfortable under my fingers as the double courses on my mandolin.

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    Registered User SincereCorgi's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    I'm guessing it's a matter of volume and richness. Lots and lots of lutes and theorbos and things were strung in courses, probably to get as much volume as possible out of gut strings, and the current practice is just an (unnecessary?) continuation of that. You can still find scads of instruments strung in courses in countries that used to be Spanish colonies, if anything can be extrapolated from that.

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    Default Re: Why courses?

    stops people asking if it's a ukulele

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    Default Re: Why courses?

    Quote Originally Posted by Didge View Post
    Hey, this is probably a really stupid, "no-duh" newbie question, but it's been bugging me and my viola-playing friend for a while.
    I'm embarrassed that the question never even occurred to me, Didge, and now I am glad you asked.

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    Default Re: Why courses?

    What is truly remarkable is that not one person so far has given an absolute, authoritative, no-arguments-needed, answer. Are we saying we don't actually know why there are pairs of strings?
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    There is at least a theoretical advantage to more strings where volume is concerned. It is not linear, so you certainly can't expect twice the acoustic volume from twice the number of strings. And, measuring acoustic volume is not trivial. Still more: human hearing is logarithmic, so you need a larger increase in sound pressure level ("spl") to percieve a smaller increase in acoustic volume. That also means that an increase in spl at an already high spl will be a smaller increment in percieved volume than would be the case for the same increase on top of an initially lower spl. So, John, did you measure the sound levels, or are you just giving your impressions from audition? Human audial memory is extremely short, and the time to remove or add strings and re-tune is an eternity to audial memory.

    The effect of the mass of strings is real and non-trivial. I have seen body modes quenched within +/- a few Hz of an open string frequency. Realized then that I have to carefully damp the strings to observe the body motions undisturbed.

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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    Quote Originally Posted by sunburst View Post
    The slightly-out-of-tune beats of the paired strings add to the sound of the mandolin and make it sound, well, like a mandolin.
    That's the most important factor to me. Two strings with frequencies f1, f2 create a resulting interference beat with a frequency of f12 = f1-f2. That makes the tone just sound more "alive".
    Apart from that, energy is transferred to and fro between the strings of a pair (the classical coupled-pendulum problem), very slightly modifying those frequencies, adding more cyclic acoustic phenomena and thus reducing tonal boredom.
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    easy - it sounds better.

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    but that's just me Bertram Henze's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tim2723 View Post
    What is truly remarkable is that not one person so far has given an absolute, authoritative, no-arguments-needed, answer. Are we saying we don't actually know why there are pairs of strings?
    I find it far more remarkable that not all plucked string instruments have pairs, given the many advantages they yield. So - is there one person that can give a reason why we should have single strings instead?

    Though it seems unfair to just turn the question around, it might help to focus on the core of the question. "Why" is a much more fuzzy generator for misunderstandings than you might expect of just three letters.

    (Example
    Q: why does a stone fall down?
    A1: because the stone sees an attractive gravity field in space-time curved by the mass of the earth.
    A2: because the stone is heavy.
    Both answers are correct but nobody can decide which is "more correct" or if they help anyway. In other words: starting a question with "why" is just asking for trouble.)


    P.S. Bill's answer above demonstrates nicely what I mean.
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    Registered User sunburst's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    Quote Originally Posted by allenhopkins View Post
    if John H is correct, and there's no volume advantage to the double-string courses, why aren't some builders making four-string instruments that sound comparable to the "traditional" eight-strings? Easier to tune, less expensive to make and to maintain, and just as good-sounding?
    I didn't say it sounded as good, just that it sounds as loud or nearly as loud. If the expected sound is that of double strings, and that expected sound is a "good" sound, then no, they don't sound as good with single strings because they do sound different with single strings.
    Dave, no I haven't measured sound levels nor tried for a direct comparison (as you say, it takes a while to add the other four strings), but am going on perceived loudness, and each time I'm impressed with how little difference I hear in loudness with just four strings. In other words, I would expect twice as much moving mass to make a much bigger difference in what I hear.

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    Default Re: Why courses?

    Tremolo and volume. With regard to tremolo, when the pick touches the string, the string does not vibrate. With a single string tremolo, the sound is on/off. With a double course, the other string is always vibrating when its companion is picked, giving a smoother sound.

    The volume issue is trickier. I found the gentleman's post stating he could not hear a difference in loudness between 4 and 8 strings interesting. I certainly trust his ear and observation more than some mathematical formula. I do recall my years as a harpsichord player, though. You do not have dynamic control over a harpsichord like one does with a piano. Instead you have terraced dynamics which are achieved, sometimes, by playing on two different keyboards, one playing one course of strings and the other playing two. The harpsichord I primarily played also had several pedals that could engage and disengage courses, including unisons and octaves, or could even couple the two keyboards. All of this changed the volume, tone, richness, etc.

    I recently read an article, that explains why 100 instuments are not 100 times as loud as a single instrument (they are about four times as loud). It follows:

    In today's excerpt - we do not hear two instruments being played at the same time as being twice as loud as one. In fact, when we hear 100 instruments, we perceive them as being only four times as loud as a single instrument. That is due to two things - first, unless they are absolutely identical, the pressure ripples (sound waves) from multiple instruments partially cancel each other out, and second, our brains operate in a manner so as to protect itself by dampening the effect of increasingly loud noise:

    "If we have two instruments (such as glockenspiels), we only get double the effect if the up-down-up-down pressure ripples (sound waves, which have the effect of alternating increased and decreased pressure) from them are perfectly in step with each other. If so, they can act together to give a [perfectly synchronized] UP-DOWN-UP-DOWN pressure ripple.

    "But, when we hit both instruments, you can bet your life that we don't hit them exactly at the same time, so the pressure ripples from the two instruments won't be in step when they reach the microphone. This means that sometimes the 'pressure up' part of one ripple will be trying to raise the air pressure as the 'pressure down' part of the other is trying to lower it. if the wave patterns were perfectly out of step, the up-down-up-down of one of them would be canceled out by the down-up-down-up of the other - and we wouldn't hear a note at all.

    "This is weird but true - it's how some farmers protect their hearing when they are driving noisy tractors all day. They buy 'active ear defenders' which look like headphones. Inside each of the earpieces is a microphone and a speaker connected to some electronics. The microphone listens to the sound which is about to reach your eardrum and makes the speaker produce the same pressure wave - but out of step with the original one. The idea is that when the two pressure waves meet, one of them tries to raise the pressure at the same time as the other tries to lower it - so nothing much happens and the eardrum is left in peace. In practice the sound waves are too complicated for this to work exactly, but it does reduce most of the noise.

    "Going back to our glockenspiels, the canceling out is nowhere near perfect because it would be too difficult to organize - the sound waves are coming from different places in the room and also bouncing off the walls, and it's incredibly unlikely that you would hit the instruments at precisely the right times to get the ripple patterns exactly out of step just at the point where they meet the microphone. What actually happens is that we do get more sound pressure from two instruments than we would from one - but there is some interference from the low-pressure bits of one wave pattern with the high-pressure bits of the other, so there is some canceling out.

    "If more instruments are involved, the amount of canceling out gets more serious. The pressure of the air next to the microphone can only be higher than normal (pushing the microphone inward) or lower than normal (pulling it outward): it can't be both at once. If we play forty glockenspiels, each of our forty glockenspiels has an 'up pressure' or 'down pressure' vote at any point in time -but a lot of these votes cancel each other out. If a forty-first glockenspielist joins our little party, then his note will be mostly canceled - though a little bit will get
    through to contribute to the overall loudness.

    "This effect is not the only one involved in our appreciation of loudness. If it was, 100 instruments would sound ten times as loud as one. But we perceive 100 instruments as being only four times as loud as one. This extra diminution in perceived loudness is the result of the way we humans are designed - so let's
    have a look at that.

    "Why don't our brains add up sounds normally? The surprising answer is that our brains and ears add up sounds in an unusual way in order to help us stay alive. From the times of the earliest cavemen to the present day, we have used our ears to help us avoid danger. This is one of the main reasons we have ears in the first place (although they are also useful for supporting your sunglasses). To
    be effective, your ears have to be able to hear very quiet noises (like the sound of someone creeping up on you), but also they must not get damaged by loud noises (such as thunder). It wouldn't be any good if you had excellent hearing for quiet noises but your ears stopped working after the first loud noise you heard.

    "Our ears are organized in such a way that quiet noises can be heard clearly but any increase in the volume of the noise has progressively less and less impact. This effect is also true of our other four senses: smell, taste, sight and touch. Six smelly socks aren't six times as smelly as one on its own (even though each of the socks is releasing the same amount of smell) and ten salted peanuts in your
    mouth aren't five times as salty as two of them (even though you now have five times as much salt on your tongue). If you light 100 candles one at a time in a dark room you get the same effect as you got with the [glockenspiels] - the first one makes the biggest difference and the eighty-seventh makes hardly any difference. If you are daft enough to stick a pin in your fingertip then it will hurt, but if you stick a second one in (next to the first one) the pain will not be
    doubled."

    Author: John Powell
    Title: How Music Works
    Publisher: Little, Brown
    Date: Copyright 2010 by John Powell
    Pages: 85-87
    How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond
    by John Powell by Little, Brown and Company
    Hardcover
    If you want to read further: Buy Now


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    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    Quote Originally Posted by billkilpatrick View Post
    stops people asking if it's a ukulele
    if only
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    I was always told it was because we enjoy the pleasant "chorus" effect of more than one string tuned to the same note.

    However, I think I like the explanation best that otherwise, it would be a ukulele.

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    Innocent Bystander JeffD's Avatar
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tim2723 View Post
    What is truly remarkable is that not one person so far has given an absolute, authoritative, no-arguments-needed, answer. Are we saying we don't actually know why there are pairs of strings?
    Thats not necessarily a surprise. We know the advantages it gives us, or the reasons we like it that way, but the real reasons may be totally different and lost on the cutting floor of the history book.

    The first time I played a banjo after having played mandolin for many years, I picked out a tune and, out of habit, I did a little tremolo, and I immediately gasped, out loud: "so thats why they have double strings on the mandolin". Who I meant by "they" I will never know.
    A talent for trivializin' the momentous and complicatin' the obvious.

    The entire staff
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    Default Re: Why courses?

    I always thought that mandolins are rigged for 4 courses because that's the way strings are packaged. Presentation is everything.

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    Default Re: Why courses?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bertram Henze View Post
    I find it far more remarkable that not all plucked string instruments have pairs, given the many advantages they yield. So - is there one person that can give a reason why we should have single strings instead?
    Blues bends, and finger vibrato on the string.

    It was the first thing I noticed when I got my 4-string mandola. Hey! I can suddenly do those things I used to do on guitar.

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