Zarh Myron Bickford: Duet in G
From: "The Bickford Method for Mando-Cello"
Published by The Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Co (1913)
This etude is from Bickford's mandocello method, which predated his much better-known mandolin method by several years. Most of the book consist of technical exercises and descriptive text, but there are a number of nice etudes. This one is a fairly simple practice for expressive mandocello tremolo, with an obligato mandolin countermelody -- there aren't many original pieces for mandocello out there, but this is one.
Unfortunately, the book is written in "universal notation", i.e. in treble clef transposed by two octaves. For my recording, I have used a trancription to bass clef posted yesterday by Wundo in the CBOM section (link) -- thanks, Bill!
This is pretty easy to play, at least the mandocello part, but good fun. Nice interplay of the alternating tremolo and arpeggio parts. I've played the mandolin part on a 1921 Gibson A-Jr, for some vintage Gibson vibes seeing that the Bickford Method was published by Gibson. I've played the slurred notes tremolo, as specified in the book, but have used alternating picking for the single-note passages rather than all-downstrokes as specified by Bickford. Sounds more fluent this way, I find.
I don't often tremolo on the mandocello, especially on the G and C courses, but the Suzuki came through quite nicely here.
Suzuki MC-815 mandocello
1921 Gibson Ajr
Martin
Bookmarks