Curious about the Bluegrass mandolin market segment

[foldedpath]

I love rock, zep, jazz, folk, and americana. Love hartford, dillards, sam , and progressive pop, if you will.
I love playing little pink houses or steve earle, wilco, etc.

But.................
A huge factor, for me, unique to bluegrass, imho, is the jam.

I can think of no other music where strangers can meet, usually somewhere in a city, everyday of the week, have a common repertoire, and musical and social interaction. (Jazz, but this is a different animal entirely. Mando is....quaint.)

Well, Bluegrass isn't unique in that respect. That describes every Irish traditional music session I've attended in pubs, restaurants, and coffee shops. It's a group of strangers the first time you walk in, but sessions in my area are usually very welcoming to newcomers. Especially if you're bringing a melody instrument like mandolin. The repertoire is shared, although the repertoire is also huge. So it may take a while to pick up the local tune preferences. There is great social interaction, often lubricated by the availability of beer and spirits at most session venues.

Most of this applies to OldTime jams too, although the venues are more likely to be "dry" (churches, grange halls and such), unless it's a house party.

Many of these sessions are under the radar unless you look them up on thesession.org lists, so there may be some in your area that you're not aware of. Most big cities and college towns in the USA and Europe/UK have Irish trad sessions going on somewhere.

Back on the main topic, it may have been the case that something other than the "bluegrass mandolin" was used in this music back in the 50's UK session scene, or the 60's Folk Revival bands, but that was a function of what was available at the time. I know many people consider an archtop oval hole more of a Celtic-appropriate mandolin, but there are many people using f-hole archtop "bluegrass mandolins" in sessions and Irish/Scottish-related bands now. They just work, and are especially capable of being heard among a passel of fiddlers at an ITM session.

Generally speaking, nobody cares what your instrument looks like in an Irish session as long as it's one of the more common instruments in the genre (tubas need not apply). I've used my F-style mandolin in many local sessions and workshops without comment. This may be another factor in why "bluegrass mandolins" dominate the market. They're the ones most capable of genre-hopping like this. And you can get very good, functional instruments at lower cost than something more specialized for the genre, like a Sobell or Forster mandolin.

[stevedenver]

Well, Bluegrass isn't unique in that respect. That describes every Irish traditional music session I've attended in pubs, restaurants, and coffee shops. It's a group of strangers the first time you walk in, but sessions in my area are usually very welcoming to newcomers. Especially if you're bringing a melody instrument like mandolin. The repertoire is shared, although the repertoire is also huge. So it may take a while to pick up the local tune preferences. There is great social interaction, often lubricated by the availability of beer and spirits at most session venues.

Most of this applies to OldTime jams too, although the venues are more likely to be "dry" (churches, grange halls and such), unless it's a house party.

Many of these sessions are under the radar unless you look them up on thesession.org lists, so there may be some in your area that you're not aware of. Most big cities and college towns in the USA and Europe/UK have Irish trad sessions going on somewhere.

Back on the main topic, it may have been the case that something other than the "bluegrass mandolin" was used in this music back in the 50's UK session scene, or the 60's Folk Revival bands, but that was a function of what was available at the time. I know many people consider an archtop oval hole more of a Celtic-appropriate mandolin, but there are many people using f-hole archtop "bluegrass mandolins" in sessions and Irish/Scottish-related bands now. They just work, and are especially capable of being heard among a passel of fiddlers at an ITM session.

Generally speaking, nobody cares what your instrument looks like in an Irish session as long as it's one of the more common instruments in the genre (tubas need not apply). I've used my F-style mandolin in many local sessions and workshops without comment. This may be another factor in why "bluegrass mandolins" dominate the market. They're the ones most capable of genre-hopping like this. And you can get very good, functional instruments at lower cost than something more specialized for the genre, like a Sobell or Forster mandolin.

Unique...of course not.

But, compared to celtic, irish, old time, in my experience, there is little room for improvising. One really needs to know the melody.

Nothing wrong with this at all. But, it does raise the bar as to casual participation.

In this regard, for me, bg , jazz, gypsy allow me to attend, listen, participate. I dont feel the need to study certain repertoires in order to be able to add to the jam. I can often pick up a new melody, but if im not right on, i dont get daggers.

Not saying folks arent friendly in other genres, ( and i also love and know some irish tunes) but some are more staid than others. And this often depends on the jam maven's influence. Galway girl is and isnt.....irish, depending.

[allenhopkins]

...Drawing the correlation that bluegrass has influenced the way the mandolin is designed or at least made a certain style the preferred option is a little bit of a stretch in the big picture. The F style took it's shape long before bluegrass, and it stayed largely the same because it works and it's aesthetically pleasing. While it may have kept pushing Loar's original design along, at this point I don;t think it's relevant to the design, or people's choice as to other designs. It's just what the mandolin looks like now, same with a guitar or a violin. There may be alternate designs out there, but the traditional shapes sell the most, regardless of the music being played on them. I think that it's just the shape it is, and it was that way before bluegrass, and it'll stay that way as things evolve. My bet is 50 years from now, it'll look else tally[/I][essentially?][I] the same, regardless of where music goes.

Well, the carved-top, f-hole, raised fingerboard, long-scale F- (or A-) model is sure not the "traditional shape" of the mandolin; the lute-derived bowl-back instrument went back centuries before Orville Gibson decided that the mandolin should be built like the violin, and Lloyd Loar added the f-holes and the raised fingerboard -- around a century ago.

And it's only "what the mandolin looks like now" because that's what the manufacturers are building. It's not what the mandolin looks like around the Mediterranean, where you still find the bowl-back, the "Portuguese" style, and other oval-hole, flat- or canted-top instruments, with varying body shapes. It's not what you find in many Celtic groups, where the oval-hole tends to be preferred -- though, as correctly pointed out, you can play any style of music on a carved-top, f-hole instrument.

The point that emerges, in my view, is that regardless of what kind of music people are playing on the mandolin -- and I do take Scott's point that bluegrass, at least in its traditional form, can be seen as a shrinking if not qualitatively declining sub-genre of acoustic folk/country-based music -- the mandolin itself, as it's being manufactured now, is designed around the iconic bluegrass instrument. Yeah, Lloyd Loar thought that the F-5 was a wonderful instrument for composed classical-derived music, and look at the variety of ethnic music Dave Apollon got out of it, but we see it in the hands of Bill Monroe -- and Jesse McReynolds, Bobby Osborne, Frank Wakefield, John Duffey, and all the bluegrass mandolinists we've heard over the years.

So, as I said back up the line, the mandolins that are being made today, in largest part, are the type of instruments that came into general prominence playing bluegrass, or its derivatives: arched-top, f-hole, raised fingerboard, longer-scale A- and F-models. That, to me, is undeniable. So Charlie S can say, "That's just what the mandolin looks like now." And yes, both the acoustic guitar and the violin have standardized on a basic single design -- you generally don't see square guitars, or cylindrical violins -- for whatever reason: optimum sound and playability, manufacturing necessities, generations of similar examples? I dunno, but there it is.

I'm actually glad that the mandolin is the least standardized of the common folk instruments, that you still see many a bowl-back, flat-top, resonator, whatever played here and there. When someone asks me "What instrument is that?" and I say "mandolin," and they respond, "My uncle played the mandolin, but it didn't look like that," I say to myself, "That's great." Diversity is still there; hope it stays that way.

[JeffD]

Well, Bluegrass isn't unique in that respect. That describes every Irish traditional music session I've attended in pubs, restaurants, and coffee shops. It's a group of strangers the first time you walk in, but sessions in my area are usually very welcoming to newcomers.

Absolutely. I have played in old time jams in a great handful of states all across the country. And I have always felt welcome. And after listening for a while I usually find I know about a third of the tunes right off, and can do something useful on another third.

I discover many OT jams through a google search while I am traveling, and I notice that many times the jam has a website where they post a list of their most commonly played tunes.

Most of this applies to OldTime jams too, although the venues are more likely to be "dry" (churches, grange halls and such), unless it's a house party..

Well its a mix. I have been to many OT jams in restaurants and pubs.

[JeffD]

But, compared to celtic, irish, old time, in my experience, there is little room for improvising. One really needs to know the melody.

Yea, but that is a matter of taste. I mean, if one is not a strong improviser the speed bump is just as high for a bluegrass jam as being unfamiliar with the repertory is for a OT jam. Just a difference in abilities and tastes.

Some OT jams are more "staid" than others, Irish too, but I have attended many that were anything but. And... I have been to more than a few orthodox bluegrass jams that were "staid" in a different way. Where the point of the break seemed to be to intimidate others.

Its all a mix. Its all up to the individual to pursue their own interests, and overcome the unique speed bumps involved.

[foldedpath]

Yea, but that is a matter of taste. I mean, if one is not a strong improviser the speed bump is just as high for a bluegrass jam as being unfamiliar with the repertory is for a OT jam. Just a difference in abilities and tastes.

Some OT jams are more "staid" than others, Irish too, but I have attended many that were anything but. And... I have been to more than a few orthodox bluegrass jams that were "staid" in a different way. Where the point of the break seemed to be to intimidate others.

Its all a mix. Its all up to the individual to pursue their own interests, and overcome the unique speed bumps involved.

Exactly. Speaking of speed bumps, Another difference is that you can have an Irish/Scottish session without a banjo. I don't think the genre police allow that for a Bluegrass or OldTime jam. So Irish is a good format for the banjo-averse. A tenor banjo player might show up, but they'll be drowned out by the fiddlers.

[red7flag]

David Curley of the Brock McGuire Band plays one mean tenor. I grew up in Philadelphia and came to hate the Mummers and the tenor banjo. David was able to put that prejudice aside. He is awesome.

[Charlieshafer]

Reading Allen's post, which makes a lot of sense, I'm also struck by another facet of this: it seems that mandolin styles can be based as much on geographical origin as style of music. So, here's a theory that's up for proving/disproving/whatever: can you say that because Gibson was the first large-scale manufacturer (at least as far as I know) to make mandolins, going back to the turn of the century, did the F style, which existed before Loar, become the de facto shape standard simply due to quantities being produced?

Once they were produced in relatively large numbers, did that shape grow on folks due to the fact that it's easier to hold than a bowlback, and had a more decorative shape?

I'm not saying that bluegrass's influence isn't large, but there were many, many sold before Monroe hit the stage, so by that time, it really was the standard for at least music in America (hence the geographic thing). Italy? Greece? Ireland? They're all different, so some guy reading this in Ireland is probably thinking that a Sobell cittern is the correct shape, and we're a bunch of nuts.

[allenhopkins]

Charlie, thanx for your post. We know Gibson as a major mandolin producer, in part because they're a company that endured -- mostly because they made guitars, acoustic and electric, as well as mandolins and banjos. After the 1930's, mandolins became a smaller and smaller part of their production, and soon Les Paul and ES-335 guitars, and such-like instruments, became the main staples of their product line -- though they continued to make limited numbers of mandolins, and introduce new models, right up to the present.

Around the turn of the 20th century, companies like Lyon & Healy, Regal, C F Martin, Vega, Bacon, Weymann et. al. were making thousands of bowl-back, later flat-back, mandolins -- not with carved tops, f-holes, raised fingerboards, etc., the hallmarks of the "bluegrass style" mandolins that we see everywhere today. Gibson was a major player, with their own particular design of mandolins, based on Orville Gibson's and Lloyd Loar's concepts, but there were many other makers, who probably took up the larger share of the market. Of that group, only Gibson is still making mandolins.

The F-model mandolin, as originally designed by Orville Gibson, has an aesthetic appeal that has led to its becoming the iconic shape of the bluegrass mandolin. Acoustically, it differs little from the more prosaic A-model, but it has the "look" that most bluegrass musicians seem to want -- largely through its association with Bill Monroe, who played F-model Gibsons almost exclusively during his professional career. However, as you point out, the F-2 and F-4 models -- without f-holes, raised fingerboard, centered bridge position (all of which were early-1920's Lloyd Loar innovations) -- were being produced and sold before Monroe was born in 1911. F-models surely didn't have the market share then, that they do now, but they were "out there," and the advent of the F-5 in 1924 or so established a new standard for Gibson mandolins.

Monroe was playing a Gibson f-hole F-model, an F-7 with a flush fingerboard, by the mid-1930's, with his brother Charlie. So his use of the innovative Gibson "bluegrass style" mandolin, predated his development of the full-band bluegrass style, which is usually dated 1946, the year Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, and "Chubby" Wise joined his already-existing Blue Grass Boys band. Thus, Monroe took up the "bluegrass style" mandolin less than a decade after Lloyd Loar developed its basic concepts. We don't call the Monroe Brothers' music "bluegrass" -- it's a fast-paced, hard-edged variant of the so-called "brother duet" era in country music -- but the musical approach that later became bluegrass is evident in Bill Monroe's playing, a dozen years before he brought the 1946 band to the Opry.

So this long-winded discussion, is just to contend that the arch-top, f-hole, raised fingerboard and longer scale mandolin has become inextricably identified with bluegrass music, and that its prevalence in the market today is clear evidence of the influence bluegrass exerts over the current crop of mandolinists, whether they're playing bluegrass or not. The "bluegrass style" mandolin may just be a optimal design for the instrument -- though there are many who would dispute that, here on the Cafe and elsewhere. But the situation is as it is: at least in the US, if you walk into almost any instrument dealer's showroom, you will see a bunch of "bluegrass style" mandolins. IMHO, that's where bluegrass has led the US mandolin market.

[LadysSolo]

I started out playing classical mandolin, and a little folk. I recently started playing a little Bluegrass, partly just to see if it was fun. I am thinking of branching into Celtic a bit. I think from reading the replies that most of us play more than one style.

[sblock]

I started out playing classical mandolin, and a little folk. I recently started playing a little Bluegrass, partly just to see if it was fun. I am thinking of branching into Celtic a bit. I think from reading the replies that most of us play more than one style.

This reminds me of an old joke: a physicist, mathematician, and an engineer are on a train traveling north from London, up into Scotland. Soon after crossing the border, they look out the window and see a flock of black sheep. The engineer says "I guess this means that the sheep here in Scotland are black!" The physicist corrects him, saying "No, all you can say is that the sheep in this particular field in Scotland are black." But the mathematician corrects them both, saying "No, all you can conclude is that in this particular field in Scotland, at least one side of each sheep is black!"

I think it might be dangerous to conclude that most of us on the MC play in more than one style. There are quite a few bluegrass-only and celtic-only and classical-only players, and I would not be surprised if they were the majority.

[foldedpath]

I think it might be dangerous to conclude that most of us on the MC play in more than one style. There are quite a few bluegrass-only and celtic-only and classical-only players, and I would not be surprised if they were the majority.

Maybe... but then you have to break that out between people who have only ever played one style of music, and those who can play many styles, but choose to focus exclusively on one style now. You may be seeing just one side of that sheep, if a person here only talks about a single genre most of the time.

I know how to play Blues and a little Jazz on mandolin, a result of a guitar background where that was my focus at the time. I've even faked my way through a quasi-Bluegrass break a few times at a casual not-too-serious OldTime jam. But I choose to play only Irish/Scottish trad and related music these days. It's a deep enough dive that I just haven't had time to focus on anything else. Doesn't mean I can't play that other stuff, and could brush up on it, if it still interested me.

Plenty of us black/white sheep around here, as well as the all-black and all-white ones.

[jesserules]

My question is, just how big is the Bluegrass segment of our community? Is it a majority? Or just a sizable minority? I wonder if the question is even answerable.

You could try just looking at the main Forums page here on mandolincafe dot com. How many posts/threads in the "Bluegrass" forum? How many in the others?

I just did that myself. Interesting to see the [SPOILER ALERT] runnerup is "Classical, Italian, Medieval, Renaissance".

[Charlieshafer]

You could try just looking at the main Forums page here on mandolincafe dot com. How many posts/threads in the "Bluegrass" forum? How many in the others?

I just did that myself. Interesting to see the [SPOILER ALERT] runnerup is "Classical, Italian, Medieval, Renaissance".

Nice catch. However, if you add just two other threads, jazz and classical, they then how bluegrass into the minority of all mandolin players. Then again, how many post in many areas? But I do agree that this is somewhat telling. The interesting trend to try to catch, and it's probably way too much work if there's no automated way to do it, would be to see how the groups break out by year. Have other threads been catching up in popularity through the years? A constant ratio? Now you're talking some serious marketing information.

[fidlplr1979]

I play bluegrass primarily and play a "bluegrass" f-style mandolin but I also enjoy playing swing,ragtime,jazz and celtic music and never limit myself by staying within one genre. Where I live in Charlottesville there are wide array of players and playing styles so that would be a hard question for me to answer on a local level.

[DataNick]

...Thank you for stating the truth about banjos. Bluegrass is banjo music, not mandolin music...

Amen and Thank you ST!

[DavidKOS]

Well, the carved-top, f-hole, raised fingerboard, long-scale F- (or A-) model is sure not the "traditional shape" of the mandolin; the lute-derived bowl-back instrument went back centuries before Orville Gibson decided that the mandolin should be built like the violin, and Lloyd Loar added the f-holes and the raised fingerboard -- around a century ago.

And it's only "what the mandolin looks like now" because that's what the manufacturers are building. It's not what the mandolin looks like around the Mediterranean, where you still find the bowl-back, the "Portuguese" style, and other oval-hole, flat- or canted-top instruments, with varying body shapes.

.......- the mandolin itself, as it's being manufactured now, is designed around the iconic bluegrass instrument. Yeah, Lloyd Loar thought that the F-5 was a wonderful instrument for composed classical-derived music, and look at the variety of ethnic music Dave Apollon got out of it, but we see it in the hands of Bill Monroe -- and Jesse McReynolds, Bobby Osborne, Frank Wakefield, John Duffey, and all the bluegrass mandolinists we've heard over the years.

So, as I said back up the line, the mandolins that are being made today, in largest part, are the type of instruments that came into general prominence playing bluegrass, or its derivatives: arched-top, f-hole, raised fingerboard, longer-scale A- and F-models. That, to me, is undeniable.

So this long-winded discussion, is just to contend that the arch-top, f-hole, raised fingerboard and longer scale mandolin has become inextricably identified with bluegrass music, and that its prevalence in the market today is clear evidence of the influence bluegrass exerts over the current crop of mandolinists, whether they're playing bluegrass or not. The "bluegrass style" mandolin may just be a optimal design for the instrument -- though there are many who would dispute that, here on the Cafe and elsewhere. But the situation is as it is: at least in the US, if you walk into almost any instrument dealer's showroom, you will see a bunch of "bluegrass style" mandolins. IMHO, that's where bluegrass has led the US mandolin market.

Thankfully I am not the only person that seems to think that the mandolin does NOT have to be a archtop F hole!

Some of us actually PREFER the sound of old-style European mandolins.

Like me.

[DavidKOS]

"Thank you for stating the truth about banjos. Bluegrass is banjo music, not mandolin music..."

Amen and Thank you ST!

Well, fiddle players and singer/guitar players seem to be a needed part of the BG band too, huh?

[Mandoplumb]

No the F5 is not the traditional shape of the mandolin, no one said it is. The question is, is it the best or most preferred. Trad may not be best, at one time the treatment for most physical problems was leaches and blood letting.

[allenhopkins]

No the F5 is not the traditional shape of the mandolin, no one said it is. The question is, is it the best or most preferred. Trad may not be best, at one time the treatment for most physical problems was leaches and blood letting.

Hmm...wouldn't compare the bowl-back mandolin to "leeches and blood-letting." I hope -- apologies to DavidKOS above -- that no one thinks I'm saying that the arch-top, f-hole, raised-fingerboard mandolin is better than other designs. It may be better for bluegrass playing -- that's hard to argue with -- but the other types of mandolin are equally valid, especially for other styles of music and playing techniques. (My Victoria bowl-back has a lousy "chop" -- jus' sayin'...)

What I have said, and believe, is that the "bluegrass style" mandolin has become pervasive in the marketplace, at least in the US. And bluegrass music, I contend, is largely responsible for this. Otherwise, why would Chinese factories be turning out thousands of copies of a Gibson F-5? Not because it's the be-all-and-end-all design for a mandolin, but because it's what US mandolin buyers expect to see -- and buy.

Not so true in Europe, evidently, where older mandolin traditions persist, and where bluegrass isn't the largest component of mandolin music -- as I'd guess it still is here. And there are highly visible mandolin virtuosi here playing other kinds of music on "bluegrass style" instruments. So things continue to evolve; we'll see (well, I probably won't see, some of you will) where we are in 25-50 years.

[JeffD]

When people see or hear a mandolin (at least in my neck of the woods) they think of Bluegrass, not Folk or Celtic, etc. Never underestimate the power of Grass

When people hear about bluegrass in my neck of the woods the tell that joke about canoe paddlers, don't stop, I hear bluegrass.

[JeffD]

No the F5 is not the traditional shape of the mandolin, no one said it is. The question is, is it the best or most preferred. Trad may not be best, at one time the treatment for most physical problems was leaches and blood letting.

I don't know that the F5 is the most preferred, outside of bluegrass and its variants. Further, I am not sure how highly prized it is outside bluegrass and its variants.

I mean, that is the whole thrust of the thread.

Here is an even more crazy thought, I am not sure folks care what mandolin you play all that much, outside of bluegrass and its variants.

And lastly - the bluegrass audience probably don't know one brand of mandolin from another.

[FatBear]

Arguments over things like "Is a Blue Chip pick worth the price?" is about as controversial as I'd like to get here.

Rollin' up my sleeves, man...

[sblock]

When people hear about bluegrass in my neck of the woods the tell that joke about canoe paddlers, don't stop, I hear bluegrass.

This is going too far.

That might seem funny to you, but it's pretty offensive to many of the people -- including many on this forum -- who like to hear and to play bluegrass music. That includes me. Bluegrass music transcends crude stereotypes about Southern white trash, and allusions to "canoe paddling" out of the film Deliverance. Some of the greatest players and innovators in bluegrass music hail from places like California (Chris Thile, Tony Rice, Clarence White), New York/New Jersey (David Grisman, Bela Fleck, Tony Trischka), Massachusetts (Bill Keith), and so on. Bluegrass fans and players are not all country bumpkins. Some of us hold doctoral degrees. Furthermore, Bill Monroe himself was always careful to dress the Bluegrass Boys onstage in formal wear, like suits and ties, simply to try to get away from the prejudice of folks like you. It does a disservice to this fine, original American art form to promulgate rude stereotypes about ignorant hillbilly hicks. It takes every bit as much musical virtuosity to play bluegrass well as to play jazz or classical music.

Yes, we all get it that you don't really like, and don't choose to play, bluegrass music. But no one is holding a gun to your head about doing that. Just because you don't prefer bluegrass music is no reason to keep knocking it here in the threads on the MC. You don't see folks like me knocking classical music or ITM, or belittling its proponents, do you?

[FatBear]

The bad - people assume I'm going to play Bluegrass just because I have a mandolin.

Last year I was sitting out on my bench next to the river (I miss my houseboat!) and a neighbor walked up and asked if I knew how to play O Sole Mio. Thankfully, I did. In Oregon, strangeness is not just accepted, it is expected.

As a player of primarily jazz, classical, Italian, Klezmer, choro, Greek and even Afghan music, there's a LOT more than Bluegrass!

Old time, blues, classical, Italian and one or two bluegrass songs that I can't really play as such because I'm just one guy. Bluegrass is a band format. I doubt that I've ever played three chop chords in a row, though once in a while they do work as punctuation for my pathetic solo performances on the couch.

Hey, there are some of us that do NOT think a Loar style F mandolin is the best instrument.

I wouldn't turn one down. As was mentioned earlier, it was actually designed as a classical instrument. Though at my level of playing, it would be smarter to sell it, pay off the house and buy a really nice A style.