Essential Mandolin Techniques.

[DavidKOS]

Ukulele is an interesting comparison. I think if you heard someone play the same thing on ukulele and good archtop mandolin, you'd hear a significant volume difference. Maybe a bit less difference with a flat-top mandolin, but the double course strings on a mandolin still have a big volume advantage due to the tension driving the top. The metal strings on a mandolin also have more "presence" due to the higher frequency content compared to the soft sound of nylon strings.

That said, there are some loud ukes out there, and not every mandolin is a "banjo killer," so we're just talking in general terms here.



There is only one technique I've heard of, where you do actually play each string in a double course separately. But it's not tremolo, it's a method of getting a partial chord by pinching down one string in a pair with your fingernail. Very difficult, not many people do this. It wouldn't normally be something you'd want to learn when first starting out with mandolin. Usually we treat each double course pair as a single note.

The dreaded split-string technique.

Watters covers that in his book.

[Explorer]

(Is there) an instance where you play just one string in a course seperately from the other. If not, I was wondering what purpose the double strings play.

There is only one technique I've heard of, where you do actually play each string in a double course separately. But it's not tremolo, it's a method of getting a partial chord by pinching down one string in a pair with your fingernail. Very difficult, not many people do this. It wouldn't normally be something you'd want to learn when first starting out with mandolin. Usually we treat each double course pair as a single note.

The dreaded split-string technique.

Watters covers that in his book.

I figured people always did this when the wanted a fuller chord voiced lower, or when two nearby melody notes need to ring, like in the intro to "Josie"....

[August Watters]

A few thoughts:

The split-string technique isn't nearly as hard as everyone thinks. It's mostly a matter of getting your fingernails the right length and shape. And forget wide fingerboards, you need narrow.

Ukulele is an interesting example -- small and loud, with single strings. Maybe it's the light construction, which allows low string tension to move a lot of air. There are also plenty of examples of single-course mandolins; if they are designed for it they can be loud, too. I suspect double courses evolved as an attempt to double the string energy, but that's a tradeoff since higher tension means you also need heavier construction.

Tremolo technique -- I think this can be confusing because we often don't define our terms clearly. "Tremolo" is often defined as fast alternate picking, but a lot of players would say it's a different technique entirely. For tremolo I usually rotate my pick away, so it's less perpendicular to the mandolin top (and pointed 45 degrees toward the ceiling). That way it's easy to contact two strings on the way down, and one string on the way up. It's a different mechanism, where instead of moving the pick with the wrist, you're allowing the wrist to move mostly by kinetic energy generated by the wrist/arm mechanism. Marilynn Mair has described this well in her method book. It's also in the historical Bickford and Pettine methods, and at least hinted at (by describing the raised wrist position) in the Calace method.

[foldedpath]

Ukulele is an interesting example -- small and loud, with single strings. Maybe it's the light construction, which allows low string tension to move a lot of air. There are also plenty of examples of single-course mandolins; if they are designed for it they can be loud, too. I suspect double courses evolved as an attempt to double the string energy, but that's a tradeoff since higher tension means you also need heavier construction.

A few years ago, I owned a mandola with single strings instead of double courses. It was a pre-TOH Breedlove custom order, "Radim Zenkl" model designed for fingerstyle playing. It's much easier to play fingerstyle if you're not getting your fingernails hung up in the double courses. To compensate for the lower attack of fingerstyle, it had a humbucker pickup at the end of the fingerboard. Otherwise it looked identical to Breedlove's standard double-course mandolin models. I assume the carving of the archtop and bracing was the same.

When it wasn't plugged in, that mandola didn't put out much volume when played with either fingers *or* a flatpick. I ended up selling it, because I decided I didn't like the humbucker tone (too much like playing a jazz guitar), and it didn't have enough useful acoustic output even if I wanted to mic it.

Maybe single strings could drive a flat-top mandolin or mandola more efficiently. But at least with this one example of an archtop mandolin, single strings weren't enough to drive the soundboard acoustically.

[mandocrucian]

Split String, for me, have the most usefulness on the G and D pairs. play 3 note chords on two courses. You can also play some harmony lines with splits in 1st position and avoid the shifts up the neck to grab some of the doublestops.

I'll use some on the unwound strings to add color tones to a chord, for example ... 00 - 00 - 02 - 33 gives you a nice G add 9 voicing.
The BEST and fattest C major chord you can play is 05-55-33-00

Splitting on the unwound strings will take its toll on your nails fairly fast, and for that reason, you may want to limit how much you do it. You can coat the nails with acrylic nail polish to toughen them a little, but polishing them with toothpaste is probably better. This is a prison trick to harden the nails into claws that won't break off as easily,... or so I've been told. !

NH

[catmandu2]

On mandolin, the strings are all close enough together to sweep back and forth quickly with the pick. Guitar strings are much further apart, so it can't be as quick and smooth with just a flatpick covering that much ground. However, there is a similar technique called "rasgueado" used with Flamenco and Classical guitar, where you splay out your fingers to cover the strings, and do a rapid controlled finger strum similar to tremolo on mandolin.

Just a correction here: rasqueados are not a tremolo device but rather variations of "strums" with various syncopations. The flamenco and classical gtr tremolo involve rapid execution on single strings (typically), as for mndln tremolo, but is not rasqueado. It's simply tremolo technique.

Swift string crossing with flatpick on wide string spacing (such as gtr) is routinely executed in oud technique.