Beware of buying mandolas

[spoefish]

Or you may find them taking over your musical life. #I recently bought a MidMo M-15 (maple, flat top, 15 1/2"scale) very sweet sounding with plenty of volume. #Liked it a lot, but kept wondering what the 17" scale mandolas were like - so when I had a chance I bought a used Weber Hyalite arch top f hole - it is darker and more woody, but no better or worse, just different. #Now I am going to have to sell one of my mandolins since I can't begin to decide which of the mandolas should go. Sell the one that doesn't work out turned out to be a real joke.

The MidMo is much better than I would have expected - or maybe not since I have had very good MidMo mandolins in the past. #But Michael Dulak (= MidMo) has these dialed in just right, and they are really all you could ask in a mandola - just too bad he is too busy getting mandolins made to make mandolas right now. #Hope he starts again soon since there is nothing as nice in the price range.

The Hyalite with the longer scale and much bigger than a Hyalite mandolin - looks like a mandlin on steroids - is quite different. #Actually it was advertised as an octave mandolin, but is definitely a mandola. #A little hard (ha) do finger two finger chords, but with the longer scale lends itself to more different tunings - like tenor banjo. #Also using a capo, which somehow does not seem as satisfying on the MidMo. #I saw Del McCoury last week, and Ronnie was playing a (I think) Gilchrest mandola that was absolutely huge - and sounded super (of course).

So for the time being I am stuck with two mandolas. #Been playing Stephen Foster and Shaker tunes - and looking at other 19th century music. #I am amazed at the different places I have been taken by the mandola. #Beware of entering here.

Stephen

[Jason Kessler]

Bravo for playing Stephen Foster, a sadly neglected genius of American music.

[Phil Jolly]

I can attest to this affliction. I picked up a Darren Craig mandola in January and I can't get enough of it. I've been meaning to post a review of it here but haven't gotten around to it as I've been playing it too much. It's amazing how much different the sound is. I've been using it to play duo gigs with a guy here in town who usually plays banjo, and its amazing how well the mandola fills out the sound. It really rumbles but is so sweet at the same time; hard to describe sound, I know, but that's the thought that jumps into my head every time I play it. Of course, this has started a viscious cycle, as I have now convinced myself that I need to expand to every member of the mando family. Can't wait to find myself a 'cello...

[red7flag]

As my signature attests I am stretched to the max with incoming mandolins and outgoing cash. If this were not the case, I would be searching for an oval hole type mandola. I got the bug bad playing and listening to mandolas at the Mike Compton workshop.
Tony

[Ted Eschliman]

Recent Dola-holic here...
One on my lap and two in the oven with builders. I doubt I'll end up keeping all three, but it's sure tempting. Them's tastey!

[Jim Garber]

Been playing Stephen Foster and Shaker tunes - and looking at other 19th century music.

I have a few 19th Century instrumental tunes here.

Jim

[Bob A]

Another heap of praise for Steven C Foster. Just got a recording (CD off a 1940s recording) of Wm Primrose playing I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair on the viola. Always sort of chokes me up. No doubt about it - his reputation was deserved, and deserves to be resurrected, despite the PC Police.

[Daniel Nestlerode]

I have to atest a love for both the mandola and 19th century minstrel & parlor music.

Look up George F. Root. He wrote the music to the song "Vacant Chair." It's a Civil War Era lament of an early death. Very powerful.

Dawg and Garcia did a song called "Two Soldiers" which is a condensed version of song from the Civil War Era called "Last Fierce Charge" about two cavalry soldiers who speak of their loved ones, share a promise to write if the other dies, and then both die. "Two Soldiers" was condensed by Mike Seeger I believe.

Both of these tunes I play on the 'dola, and they're both played in G.

I'm in the process of rewriting spome of the lyrics to "Oh, Susanna" by SCFoster. You never hear verses 2 and 4, mostly because they use language we consider offensive and the content of those verses shows a callous disregard for the lives of former slaves. I'd like to get the feel and the point that Foster was trying to make without having to use the language. Because without the language, the allusions to the callous disregard for life disipate.

Most people don't realize that Fost er wrote basically 2 kinds of songs: Minstrel tunes and parlor tunes. The former were written to be performed by travelling troops of minstrels; the latter were designed to be performed in the parlors of the white upper and middle classes.

Best,
Daniel

[jaizbones]

Yup. I picked up a Flatiron and now have a whole new landscape of possibilities. I play some Indian rag type things and the mandola is better suited for that, more of an ethnic sound.
Is there any educational material out there for the mandola. Aside from the DVD at Elderly?

Later