Mando in indian music

[delsbrother]

Does calling these things a banjo make them so?

YES! Finally, you understand!

[Dagger Gordon]

Some good ones there, Paul!

Actually, I've never heard Srinivas, so I don't know if he's any good or not.

As regards calling his instrument a mandolin, I guess it's not, but then again neither is an Irish 'bouzouki' a bouzouki as the Greeks would know it, etc etc.

The tuning: virtually anything goes as far as guitar playing is concerned nowadays, so I can't see why a 'mandolin' should necessarily be any different.

And as for 'toy guitar', I knew I'd read that somewhere else. It was 'Talking Timbucku', by Ali Farka Toure. On track 2, Ry Cooder is credited with playing 'electric mando-guitar and acoustic toy guitar'! Maybe the use of 'toy' instruments has a more interesting history than you might think. While we're on the subject, what exactly is an 'electric mando-guitar'? Doesn't sound that different from what Srinivas uses, actually.

[Jacob]

The Vox Mando Guitar is a solid body octave twelve string guitar.
Veillette Guitars makes a similar instrument with a scale length closer to that of a (tenor) mandola.

[glauber]

What about these things even slightly suggests banjo (beside the name)?

Strings, not much more. I wonder if they were first seen by "Westerners" when the banjo was the common household instrument. Maybe if they had seen later, they'd be called "Indian guitar".

I wonder why the name of the kitchen utensil. I think we've discussed this before. (Because of the hand motion that reminds people of strumming?)

Most places i looked say "mandolin" derived from "mandola", which derived from "pandoura" (ancient Greek lute).

[Arto]

From Groveland´s post early in this thread:

"I'm not sure the second question is on the same lines, but now that you ask, this guy's got an encyclopedic approach to the mode thing... here... I think I may have found an error or two, but it's so hard to tell with these things..."

That link´s contents are really wierd. None of the Arab modes looked "right". Where are the quarter tones?

Then I noticed this:

"This is a little Javascript program that contains about 800 different melodic modes (equal-tempered only), categorized into different types."

If he has squeezed Arab, Turkish or Indian modes into equal-tempered "approximations", what´s the use of all that work? Sorry if someone feels I´m snobbish, but to me a major part of the beauty of for example Turkish classical music are those intervals that are NOT half steps or whole steps.

Arto

[groveland]

Arto - Nope, that's what I was thinking, too. #I looked at his Jewish modes, and had a little problem with them, too. #Actually, although it's interesting and all, I'm sorry I posted the link - It perpetuates web misinformation, and if we're not careful we ultimately end up with elaborate fictions like Wikipedia!

My apologies for the indiscretion.

<span style='font-size:7pt;line-height:100%'>Note - The folks right here on the Cafe helped me sort out the truth of the Jewish mode thing.</span>

[jmcgann]

Most 16" scale instruments would NOT be recognized as a guitar- ever heard of a soprano guitar? Zappa had one on the cover of Guitar Player in the '70's, but that was it.

If it's tuned CGCGC and is a 16" scale, that's good enough to be a mandolin for me- as if the concept needs validation by anyone?!?!

So Tiny Moore played an electric guitar, but tuned in 5ths? They better recall all those albums and re-do the liner notes, now that we know the truth! #

So all those drunks are right when they call a mandolin a "little guitar" after all!!! And all this time I thought it was a ukelele!!!

[mandocrucian]

The luthier spin.... could it have something to do with income? A "toy guitar" such a dismissive marginalization - how could could something with a short neck and solid body that you can buy for $150 come anywhere near this CUSTOM "electric MANDOLIN" (prices start at $1000+)? #Generic drugs?....vastly inferior to the brand-name varieties, how could it be any good at 1/10 the prices we charge?

The conversions are the way to go for the best bang for the buck. I've been advocating it for years. Let's you tune lower for more vesatility and rhythm section viability. Omit the low 6th string and now you can push bend those low truck-driving licks without going off the fretboard. #Replace the crummy stock pickups with some Duncans and it don't sound bad at all.

I suppose all small instruments should be called "toys" if they could fit a child's hands. #Toy Cello (violin), #Toy flute (piccolo), Toy Double Bass (cello)....

But the electric solidbodies..... Even though I think of my 5-string conversion an an electric mandola (GDAEa - an octave lower than mandolin), I refrain from bringing up the "M word" around any electric players. NO, it's a "guitar in an celto-blues tuning." #

Bring up the M-word and the next thing, someone starts playing "Rocky Top" or begins yapping about Bill Monroe or Grisman. Instant loss of any credibility as anything beyond a cast member of Hee-Haw. (And if I counter by suggesting the song "Singing In The Rain" it sure isn't Gene Kelly, but the Clockwork Orange, version that's running through my mind, my little droogies.)

[Paul Hostetter]

This guy plays - brilliantly - what he appropriately calls a soprano guitar:



Its common name in the Portuguese speaking world is the cavaquinho, and Henrique Cazes's group is called Família Violão (Family of Guitars) which features soprano, tenor, regular Spanish and acoustic bass guitars. This is no toy. The group is simply incredible.

There are a host of cheap instruments in small sizes which one finds in variety stores, truckstops, drugstores, open markets in third world countries which were produced to be sold as novelties for children. They are different than a Martin 5-K uke, believe me. I would never suppose any instrument that fits in a child's hands would be a toy version of something real.

A violoncello is the bass instrument of the violin family. The bass viol, which is a viol and not a violin, is a voice below the cello, which is why it's called the double bass.

[jmcgann]

Let's chip in for one of those "Your Favorite Band Sucks" T shirts from theonion.com

As with Tiny Moore’s nifty li’l thing, if you simply heard it played, you would never in a million years think it was a mandolin. Even if you saw it being played, you’d still never think to call it a mandolin. Only because the guy playing it is hyped as a mandolin player does anyone think it’s a mandolin.

Well, I for one play both mandolin and guitar, and I can tell the difference. I know that I play different kinds of lines depending on the tuning. Some ideas lie more naturally in the 5ths tuning than in guitar- ask any guitarist who has tried to learn Kenny Baker (or Paganini's Caprices) exactly note for note on guitar. There is a conceptual difference between a "soprano guitar" and an electric mandolin. Whether it is perceived by other listeners or not...

[Paul Kotapish]

Lots of passionate opinions generated by this thread.

I have the highest regard for Paul H and his views on nearly everything related to music, but I stick with my original position that the little gizmos played by Tiny Moore et al are at least as much electric mandolins as they are electric guitars. Qualify that with single course electric mandolins if you must, but if the guys playing 'em think they are mandolins and if they are playing lines that they could manage to transfer to a double-course version without refingering, it's still a mandolin to me.

The thing played by U. Srinivas might have started life as a miniature guitar, but it sure doesn't look or sound all that different from a lot of similar instruments purpose-built as single-course electric mandolins, so why quibble?

I just don't see how this is any different in scope from the dramatic variations in shape, size, materials, and tunings that we encounter and accept in guitars all the time.

If the moniker "guitar" can embrace Keith Richards five-string Telecaster tuned G B G B D and Roger Tollroth's 12-string tuned A D A D A D and Curtis Mayfields Strat tuned F# A# C# F# A# F# and Segovia's Hauser tuned E A D G B E and Roger McGuinn's seven-string with an octave G, and it can withstand all the fingerstyling, flattpicking, tapping, and thrashing that it takes, then I suspect that the term "mandolin" is sturdy enough to accept all the equivalent variations without becoming too general to be useful.

The argument that the electric versions don't sound like the acoustic versions remains valid, but that points been made about the guitar for 75 years of so at this point, and it hasn't kept people from thinking of the electric versions as guitars nonetheless.

In terms of shape and materials, the acoustic mandolin is as varied as the guitar world, with round backs, flat backs, archtops, florentine models, art nouveau flourishes, guitar-shaped bodies, and virtually any variation one can imagine. A quick visit to the Eye Candy pages right here at the Cafe demonstrates that clearly enough.

In terms of the technique aspect, again I'd argue that there are already so many dramatic variations in style and technique as to render any exclusion from the mandolin club based on playing style pretty tenuous. There are chats about this topic every day here. Bill Monroe played primarily with downstrokes. Yank Rachell played with almost all upstrokes. Mick Maloney plays jigs and reels with a thin pick with lots of right-hand ornaments. John McGann plays jigs and reels with a beefier pick and uses more left-hand ornaments. Bush thunders, Thile whipers. Wakefield is wild and wooly, Reischman is clean and precise.

Just one guy's opinion.

Have at it, Paul.

[groveland]

Mandolins have a dot on the 10th fret. Guitars on the 9th fret. U's has a dot on the 10th. So there.

We had a similar discussion recently about electric bouzoukis vs. electric guitars tuned in 5ths. I'm wondering why that topic didn't elicit such passionate opinions.

[Paul Hostetter]

Lots of European guitars have 10th fret dots.

I stick with my original position that the little gizmos played by Tiny Moore et al are at least as much electric mandolins as they are electric guitars. Qualify that with single course electric mandolins if you must, but if the guys playing 'em think they are mandolins and if they are playing lines that they could manage to transfer to a double-course version without refingering, it's still a mandolin to me.

If they’re are at least as much electric mandolins as they are electric guitars, that could simply put them in the neither fish nor fowl department, which is about as far as I would go. By that measure any line anyone played on any instrument that in the player’s minds mimicked a mandolin line would therefore make their instrument a mandolin. Where to draw that line is a personal choice, and where that line is means far less to me that whether the music is good. Jimi Hendrix could have probably, with a little effort, replicated some of his famous passages on a 12-string guitar and called it mandolin. I would find the mandolin part unconvincing (it’d be BS, actually) but the music would probably be pretty good. Jacob do Bandolim played a few sides on cavaquinho (the soprano guitar, remember?) and made no note of the instrument (it was built into his stage name) and hardly anyone has ever noticed it wasn’t a mandolin.

When I listen to Tiny Moore I hear electric guitar - it matters not whether he could have played the same thing on a conventional mandolin. Nothing about his style of playing sounds like mandolin, which doesn’t diminish my appreciation for the music at all. Likewise when U. plays, there is utterly nothing about his style of playing that suggests mandolin either. All the guys you cited sound like they are playing a mandolin:

Bill Monroe played primarily with downstrokes. Yank Rachell played with almost all upstrokes. Mick Maloney plays jigs and reels with a thin pick with lots of right-hand ornaments. John McGann plays jigs and reels with a beefier pick and uses more left-hand ornaments. Bush thunders, Thile whipers. Wakefield is wild and wooly, Reischman is clean and precise.

They all play mandolins with 8 strings in four courses. They all use tremolo (not amps) to extend their notes. And you and I must know two different Yank Rachells!

It’s about music. I like Tiny Moore and I know he had a sense of humor about his instrument and he played great music, so I’m willing to say OK, whatever. I’m less sanguine about the Srinivas thing because there’s posturing and no humor, the music’s not thrilling, and the thing is as much a mandolin as it is a banjo or a balalaika. But it’s about music, right? The terminology is not so important.

[groveland]

(Me) U's has a dot on the 10th. So there

(Paul) Lots of European guitars have 10th fret dots.

Of course, it was a joke I was making, kindof alluding to the seemingly arbitrary criteria we use to distinguish between instruments, particularly in the mandolin family.

I feel pretty confident that preserving a clear definition of what an instrument is (and is not) provides big value. The name, and associated definition communicates all that has been done on that instrument, what is currently being done on the instrument, and what is thought possible on that instrument within certain parameters. (Helps in shopping for one, too.)

And like one wise man said here recently, "Context gives meaning, right?" So if your context is undefined, where's the meaning? It's kindof hard to get good at a thing when no one can tell you what that thing is or what it's supposed to do when done right.

So to me, that instrument U's playing is simply not a mandolin. But by the same token, somebody please give it a name!

[jmcgann]

Either you like the music, or don't. All the rest is personal BS.

"Call it yo mammy if you want to"- Sonny Boy Williamson

PS- Paul, I rarely use tremolo; I am never going to be mistaken for a clarinet or saxophone, but my (acoustic) axe has great sustain. I use tremolo when I want to use tremolo, as an effect, and not because I have to. I don't know if I played a note of tremolo on my "Upslide" CD (haven't heard it since I recorded it though- I already know what i sound like for better or worse...)

[mrmando]

Well, gee. Let's not forget that prior to 1952, Tiny Moore played a Gibson EM150, which is what you hear on "Milk Cow Blues" and all those other Bob Wills sides he's on. He didn't get the Bigsby until after he left the Texas Playboys! Does Tiny on the Bigsby sound so much different than Tiny on the EM150 that he all of a sudden stops being a mandolinist and becomes a toy guitarist in 1952? Or is an EM150 not a mandolin either?

Interesting observations by Paul about Srinivas ... I haven't listened to his recordings that much, but the two times I've seen him live I didn't find anything lacking in his technique or his musical ideas. It could be that cheaply made recordings aren't doing his work justice. Of course, my approach to Srinivas is the opposite of Paul's. I'm interested in Srinivas because of the electric mandolin, and I haven't paid attention to other Indian artists, so I've no idea how he stacks up against them. There's nothing wrong with liking other Indian musicians better.

The earliest version of what Paul's calling a "toy guitar" actually had a headstock drilled for 8 tuners:

So it was really a standard solidbody electric mandolin, and I disagree that setting it up with 5 strings magically transforms it into a toy guitar. His later instruments, as far as I can tell, have been exact copies of that one, except that at some point he decided that instead of three unused tuners he'd rather have just one, so he went to a six-string headstock. (Who knows, he might've had the original headstock cut down at some point.) Why the extra tuner's still there I don't know ... I theorized on another thread that builders in India either can't get or don't want to bother with individual tuning machines, so they're using 3-on-a-plate guitar tuners for these things.

Furthermore, Paul, Srinivas is my age, and I ain't in my 40s yet. That 2nd photo you posted isn't even Srinivas!

In Italy before the Neapolitan mandolin became the standard, there were "mandolins" with six courses and non-5ths tunings. I doubt anyone would say Monroe's F5 ceased to be a mandolin when he retuned it for "Get Up John" or "My Last Days on Earth."

And doesn't being the first person to play the instrument, whatever it is, in Carnatic music give Srinivas the right to call it what he wants to? Seems to me his axe is as much of a departure from "guitar" as it is from "mandolin." Why should the definition of one instrument be more elastic than the definition of another? Yeah, there's posturing and no humor around Srinivas and his music, but that doesn't give anyone the right to change the name of his instrument for him. I maintain that the posturing doesn't come from Srinivas himself ... he's as unprepossessing as any musician I've ever met ... and as for the lack of humor, he's a deeply religious man and performing music is an act of religious devotion for him. If you can't deal with that, fine, but it still doesn't give you naming rights over his instrument.

I'm content to call the thing a "Carnatic mandolin" to distinguish it from other varieties of mandolin. If you want a really confusing musical term, I nominate "tambura."

[jmcgann]

FWIW I play also play an electric 5 string mando, and when I do, "guitar" is the LAST thing on my mind, stylistically, conceptually, whatever.

That's one musician's point of view. You can call it electric guitar when it's in my hands ; I can call you wrong, because I play electric guitar in guitar tuning, and mando in mando tuning. I don't play guitar clichés on the mando or vice versa

[mandocrucian]

Too bad some folks are uncomfortable with paradox. Is it and "electric mandoloin" or an "electric guitar" or can it actually be both at the same time? #

Albert Collins would have said he was playing a Telecaster/electric guitar - but he had it tuned to an open Dm tuning, and capoed so far up the neck that he was operating with a scale length comparable to a mandola or even mandolin. To me, he was playing electric mandola in a slightly altered tuning....and he sounded great!

I loved the sound Collins got, but it wasn't until I saw his Homespun video that I became aware of his "unconventional" set-up, leading me to measure the scale length of my Fender (gtr) capoed to the 7th or 9th frets. Whoa...I've already got this on my mini-guitar conversion - if he can sound that good, it mean there's no reason I shouldn't be able to get something effectice on my "electric mandola"

When I do play my electric mandola, I do think GUITAR stylistically. Depending on the groove, I'll start hearing (which means playing) stuff ala Garcia or Thompson or BB or Hendrix or Santana or Don Rich. There's nothing that makes me cringe as much as hearing conventional BG mandolin playing and vocabulary on an electric.

But then again, if I'm playing an acoustic, I'm probably playing more akin to (guitar wielding) Thompson, Carthy, SRV, Peter Green etc. or fiddle (Swarbrick, Sugarcane Harris, Annbjorg Lien) or clawhammer banjo or whatever. And I'll opt for electric guitar vibrato over tremolo 9 times out of 10.

So what defines "mandolin"? #Is it a particular tuning? or the scale length? or double courses? or vocabulary? acousticity? It is the "every-note-with-a-different pickstroke" articulation (or lack of articulation)?#all of the above?

I'm in the David Lindley "It's all one big instrument" camp.

NH

[glauber]

If nobody does the Magritte joke soon, i'll have to do it (ce n'est pas une mandoline)

[mrmando]

Niles, a mandolin is like obscenity. I can't tell you what it is, but I know it when I see it.

It all goes back to the oud, anyway, or even earlier than that if you like.

[jmcgann]

Niles, this is not aimed at you, I haven't heard you play electric, and to each his own- but in response to

There's nothing that makes me cringe as much as hearing conventional BG mandolin playing and vocabulary on an electric.

I agree there, but I have to add that nothing would bore me (not so much cringe) more than hearing the same old clichéd guitar lines (as in the recycled pentatonic blues box licks you hear in a music store on a Saturday morning) played on electric mando- don't we hear them enough on Strats and Teles as it is?

Tiny and Srinivas are hardly recycling guitar licks...

[mandocrucian]

I agree there, but I have to add that nothing would bore me (not so much cringe) more than hearing the same old clichéd guitar lines (as in the recycled pentatonic blues box licks you hear in a music store on a Saturday morning) played on electric mando- don't we hear them enough on Strats and Teles as it is?

Yeah, overused cliches, driven by muscle memory, whether guitar box patterns or mando Monroe-isms can become tedious, regardless whether either is played on either instrument. I don't think it's really the "raw material" (pentatonics, blues scales, etc) at fault, but rather application which seems to have bypassed the ear of the player entirely, except for registering what came out of the instrument after the digital autopilot has waggled the fingers around in preprogrammed reflexive motions.

However, if there is going to be cliched playing, I think I'd rather hear cliches derivitive of the musical style being played, rather than those transplanted from a different source. (Round hole/square peg)

= = = = = =

Depending on the groove, I'll start hearing (which means playing) stuff ala Garcia or Thompson or BB or Hendrix or Santana or Don Rich.

Just as a clarification here, the above has much more to do with playing with a similar tone/attack/articulation/phrasing than memorized licks and vocabulary. (e.g. One doesn't need to literally quote Charlie Parker to play something "Parker-esque".)

Niles H

[Dagger Gordon]

I'm sure many of us have experimented with trying to approximate mandolin/ cittern tuning on both acoustic and electric guitars.

At one time I had an old Hofner Galaxy guitar with only 4 strings on, tuned ADae (which is the OM tuning I use). It had no bottom or top strings.
It worked quite well, actually. The instrument was clearly a guitar but my approach was undoubtedly coming from my mandolin playing, albeit with non-standard tuning.

If that was my main instrument, would that make me an electric octave mandolinist or a guitarist? I'm not sure.

Going back to Srinivas, is it perhaps a bit hard on him to say he's playing a 'toy' guitar? A mini-guitar or a short-necked guitar or something like that would give the guy a bit more credibility. I have to assume that if John MacLaughlin thinks he's worth playing with, then he must be a bit better than Paul suggests and that his instrument is a bit more than a toy. Maybe not, though.

I must say, I've always thought that Paul knew what he was talking about.

[jmcgann]

Dagger- there is a lot of great Srinivas to check out; you might start with Remember Shakti's "The Believer" or his solo album on the Real World label "Rama Sreerama".

BTW I think is electric tone is wonderful- fat and warm, no icepick-to-the-forehead tones...

[melodicdreams]

Speaking of which . ..

Remember Shakti Tour - Manopa

Also . . .

with Shankar Mahadevan on Vocals

Some GREAT Srinivas and McLaughlin stuff with Shakti.

I love youtube . .