# Music by Genre > Jazz/Blues Variants, Bossa, Choro, Klezmer >  Mando in indian music

## lightnbrassy

I wonder how the mandolin became an important instrument in Indian classical music. I am interested in the story. Also, tuning and scales.

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## Nathan Kellstadt

Along the same lines, I would love to know of any books that detail a variety of scales and modes. I've seen some that contain plenty of variations on the minor scale and the standard modes, but haven't found any with a more international/ethnic flavor.

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## groveland

I can't answer the first question. 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... (I even saw a site where the guy says that harmonic minor is the relative minor of harmonic major - I'll bet that confused someone.  Always gotta double check things on the web.)

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## Paul Hostetter

Carnatic (south Indian) mandolin pretty much devolves from one guy. He was referred to as "Master" because he was prepubescent, not because he was a master at the time. He's not a prodigy anymore because he's in his 40s. And he hasn't played a mandolin since he was a little tyke (note soapbar pickup):



What he has played most of his life so far is a child's electric guitar tuned EADGG or equivalent, in five single courses. The only thing that connects it to mandolin is the approximate size. Mr. Srinivas has a coterie of followers now, all playing the same toy guitars. Once you get past the unfortunate labels and misconceptions you can just listen to his music and see if it floats your boat. He's no slouch. Lots of recordings to choose from, and he tours the US from time to time, which is of course the best way to connect with this music.

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## Paul Hostetter

PS: tuning and scales in Indian music are a life's work unto themselves. Why a mandolin? Indians love the Next Big Thing as much as anyone. Any musician needs some little thing to distinguish himself in the marketplace, and this was his. Or at least his parents'. Believe it or not, the modern sitar and sarod are not that old. The music is old, but the instruments have been evolving.

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## delsbrother

Paul, get with the program! It's a five string mandolin with six tuners in an alternate tuning!

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## delsbrother

How are violins tuned in Indian music? Just as in the West, or as Srinivas tunes his mandolin? BTW, according to his website and emando.com, Srinivas uses CGCGC.

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## Paul Hostetter

I quoted Srinivas directly on his tuning, although I took it from a bizarre little essay on the history of the mandolin which he wrote, and which I found to be so nonfactual and so fantastic that I wonder if I should trust any part of it. To this particular point, he said:




> The Mandolin has got four pairs of strings ( 8 strings). With these pairs of strings it is not possible to use it for Carnatic music. It is difficult to produce Gamakas (the prolonged notes), which are very important to bring out the nuances of classical music in the instrument in vocal style. So I replaced these four pairs of strings with four single strings and started practicing Carnatic music. And on my father's advice I added another string, the fifth for the base (Mandra sthayi). So now, there are totally 5 strings for my Mandolin - E, A, D, G, G.


Totally. One usually lines out tunings low to high. Who knows what he meant by this? In any case, his recordings don't sound as though he uses a tuning anything like this at all, either low to high, or otherwise. 1-5-1-5-etc. is a typical way to tune Indian instruments, including violins and so on. The pitches aren't important, but the intervals are. CGCGC, or GDGDG, or AEAEA would be the same. And it's probably what he really uses. 

In the aftermath of a similar thread a month or two ago here, I relistened to a bunch of Srinivas stuff and refreshed my memory why I don't listen to him. It's not very good music, period. The electric cheapness of the sound negates all the subtlety I associate with good Indian classical music. Even if he was playing an acoustic instrument that had the capacity for a broader palette of nuances, his ideas aren't very good and his execution and intonation are just so-so. There are so many better musicians in India. The real puzzle for me is why people are so willing to buy into the idea that he's playing a mandolin. It's a toy guitar. His gamakas are prolonged by electronics. Italians prolong theirs with tremolo. Even other Indian musicians who play instruments like santoor manage to do the same: good technique, no gimmicks.

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## Mandomax

If you want to dig deeper into ragas, there is a very comprehensive book entitled "The Raga Guide." It details 74 common hindustani ragas. It is almost like a textbook. Be forewarned- the ragas are more like demos, and not live performance pieces. very good and enlightening, and IIRC, it even delineates the notes of the raga on the staff. Just google the raga guide and you can find it or look it up on Amazon.com. I have it and dig it.
best,
Max

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## glauber

Paul is bolder than most. I listened to a few U Srinivas recordings and they didn't float my boat enough to use my emusic download credits, but i attributed it to my total lack of knowledge of Indian music. On the other hand, the flutist Hariprasad Chaurasia totally floats my boat. I can listen to him for hours - very trippy. (Flute is really my main instrument, although i've been pretending to be a mandolin player.) If i understand it correctly, what these 2 guys are attempting to do is to adapt vocal styles of Indian music to their instruments. Maybe the flute is just closer to the voice and works better. But i do consider Hariprasad to be one of the world's great flute players.

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## Paul Hostetter

I bought my first Indian music records in 1960 and saw both Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan live within the next year or two. I've been an avid fan of Indian music ever since and have attended hundreds of live concerts, which has been easy to do in the places I have lived. 47 years is enough time to form a few opinions, non? Hariprasad Chaurasia is indeed one of the bansuri greats (but check Pannalal Ghosh), and some of my other favorite musicians at the moment are Shujaat Khan, most of his famous relatives (Vilayat, Amjad), Shivkumar Sharma (check his Call of the Valley, a pioneering album from the 60s that included Chaurasia and the first slide wizard Brijbushan Kabra), sarod players Pandit Buddhadev Dasgupta and Rajeev Taranath. Not to ignore Ali AKbar Khan and his sons, and Zakir Hussein, the Yo-Yo Ma of percussion. These are Hindustani and Carnatic classical players, but there's also Qawwali, urban brass band, Baul, filmy music, a million flavors of local folk and temple music, dance music, it's just huge.

The real deal about any Indian instrumental music is its likeness to the human voice. The ability to glide from one pitch to another as a singer can do is everything. The violinist and the sarod player have no frets to complicate things, the modern sitarist can bend notes. Flutes can bend. The santouri was a tough nut to crack but Shivkumar did it very successfully, coming from essentially Persian roots. The only successful guitar has been slide guitar. Srinivas can get the glissando sufficiently, but the music is so clunky compared to these other folks.

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## glauber

It must be, Paul. I haven't lived 47 years yet.  

Yes, Ravi Shankar is amazing, and he has a couple of talented (and pretty) daughters! You're fortunate to have been able to see all this people. I consider Hariprasad Chaurasia one of the greatest flute players, because in my view there is more in common than different in the playing of the different kinds of (fipple-less) flutes. The range of technique is large, but it's more like a large ocean than a lot of separate ponds. Fippled flutes are not that different either, they just make two of the variables (the direction and shape of the airstream) into constants, but all the other variables are still there.

Besides the classical Hindustani or Carmatic religious music that's based on the voice, there must be purely instrumental styles of Indian music too, no?

And of course Indians are very good at incorporating the most unexpected foreign instruments, like the harmonium, for example.

The whole Bollywood thing is fascinating too.

Altogether, just too much stuff for me. India is vast. I must check P. Gosh.

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## Paul Hostetter

If there are purely instrumental styles of Indian music that don't connect to the voice, I don't know what they'd be. Maybe the brass bands, a little (they are after all an artifact of European colonialism) but even they have that swooping glissando. Anything with discrete notes, like a piano or a rigid fretted instrument, just doesn't fit, which is why they're not part of mainstream Indian music. Harmonium is seldom heard as a solo instrument, but it sure works well accompanying singers. I was listening this morning to Khadri Gopalnath, a south Indian saxophonist. He's made a niche for himself like so many others playing unusual instruments, and it's not the most peaceful music, but it's good, and he sure knows how to evoke the voice, even on that crazy instrument.

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## Dagger Gordon

Out of interest, Paul, what do you think of Shakti, and indeed John MacLaughlin's music in general?

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## jmcgann

> It's not very good music, period.


Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

There's a big difference between not liking something, as a matter of opinion, and _judging it's worth as music._ 47 years of listening or not. Wow. Bow Wow.

Remember Shakti. You don't have to like it, but to call it "not very good music" is just beyond reason. Or just flame bait.

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## Garrett

BTW Tiny Moore and Johnny Gimble both played a five string electric instrument and they called it a mandolin. U wouldn't tell them they weren't playing a mandolin.

I really love U Srinivas.

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## Steve Davis

Don't forget the amazing Chatur Lal on tabla.

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## Paul Hostetter

I don't like everything John McLaughlin's ever done, but he sure is a good musician. Some people just riff and fake it when they're trying to sound Indian, but he's really done his homework and plays from deep inside the music. I like one of the Remember Shakti lineups better than the older sessions, partly because the recordings I have are live and the instrumentation more agreeable to me: Hariprasad on flute and McLaughlin on simple guitar plus Zakir and Vikkur Vinayakram, the ghatam guy. Gorgeous stuff. Didn't care for the iterations with either Srinivas or Shankar, both of which I found frantic and show-offy. 

I've had some fine times with Tiny Moore, a gentleman and a marvelous musician, very much missed by everyone he ever touched. But if you hear him playing his Bigsby on a recording and you don't know it's him playing that, it just sounds like an electric guitar. You would never know it was tuned in fifths, or took up so little space onstage. Which is fine: it's good music, it's not supposed to be a mandolin statement. Jethro Burns played the mandolin, and there was no mistaking that. I love the stuff they did together.

I'll never forget Chatur Lal. He was the first tabla player I ever saw perform live.

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## delsbrother

Paul, later on in his site he lists the CGCGC tuning, and since it's palindromic you can't tell if he's going low-high or high-low. I understood the EADGG thing to be an attempt to describe "regular" mando tuning, hi-low (uh...with an added G?). But then again there's a lot on that site that defies understanding..

As for the rest of your assertions...

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## Paul Hostetter

Assertions? You want me to assert something?

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## Paul Kotapish

I'm a virtual ignoramus when it comes to Indian music, so I don't have a clue about whether the music U Srinivas plays is any good or not, but I kind of like the noise that it makes. I don't really care that it isn't the real deal. Lots of music I like isn't the real deal, either. In fact I often find that some of the most interesting stuff occurs when folks are bending, breaking, or ignorant of the proprieties. It might not be good music, but I kind of like it anyway.

And with all due respect to Paul H's wisdom and experience, the debate about whether the instrument that Srinivas--or any electric, single-course mandolinist--plays is a mandolin or not reminds me a bit of Segovia's rants that electric guitars--or even the steel-string guitars--weren't real guitars or Hugo D'Alton's declarations that the Gibson F-5 was an abomination that had no place in mandolin music. If the guitar world can embrace everything from Martin D-18s to archtop tenors to Keith Richard's five-string Telecaster with open tunings to Charlie Hunter's fan-fretted, seven-string to Rickenbacher electric 12-strings, then I'd vote for accepting a little latitude in the definition of the contemporary mandolin, too. 

Just one guy's opinion.

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## glauber

If it's a half-sized electric guitar with 6 strings not tuned in fifths, why call it a mandolin? Names are more useful if they help describe the object. why does it matter anyway? Why are we so stuck on the gear?

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## Paul Hostetter

> Why are we so stuck on the gear?


Or even names, for that matter. Well, in the case of certain people, I can surmise. Maestro of the Toy Guitar just doesn't have much snap, does it? Hard to get an agent. 

Segovia's rants are legendary. He advocated extermination for all gypsies for defiling the guitar just by how they played it. He devoted his life to redeeming the guitar from the grubby beasts in Jerez. Then he was massively upstaged by Django when they both played for the King of Spain. Django played Bach. That's a very funny story and there's more to it. Both men were playing acoustic six-strings tuned EADGBE.

Hugo D'Alton may have been pissed off about the American mandolin, but the fact remained that it had four courses of eight strings tuned GDAE. It involved the same playing technique and it could play the same music. 

Srinivas's instrument doesnt look like a mandolin. It isn't tuned or strung like a mandolin. It isn't played like a mandolin. It doesn't sound anything like a mandolin. Nothing about his playing technique overlaps mandolin much except in the vaguest sort of way: you pluck a string. It's not morphologically at all like mandolin: different body type and shape. Nothing about it says anything but solidbody electric toy guitar, which it always was. Except he chose to call it a mandolin, and his "explanation" of his changes, linked above, speaks for itself. 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. 

Here's an Indian banjo:



I kid you not, thats what its called. You strum all the strings with a flatpick in your right hand,and push buttons or keys with the other. Here's another one:



Does calling these things a banjo make them so?

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## glauber

Cute. A cross of a banjo and an autoharp, two of the most deadly instruments known.

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## Paul Hostetter

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

FWIW, they also have an Indian name, less commonly used: bulbul tarang.

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## delsbrother

> Does calling these things a banjo make them so?


YES! Finally, you understand!

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## 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.

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## 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.

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## 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).

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## 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

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## 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>

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## 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!!!

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## 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.)

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## 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.

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## 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...

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## 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.

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## 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.

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## 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.

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## 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!

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## 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...)

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## 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."

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## 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

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## 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

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## glauber

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

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## 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.

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## 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...

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## 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

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## 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.

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## 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...

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## 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 . .

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## groveland

RE: Shakti on YouTube. Whoa! Excellent.

(Or should I say "U" Tube.  Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

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## glauber

Wow, that guy can sing, heh? And J.M.L. plays like he's possessed. Amazing.

Here, twice the toy guitar, double the fun!

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## glauber

Ooops! I meant, 6-string single-course solid body electric mandolin in alternate tuning.

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## Garrett

Whatever he's playing, he sure can't play. Shameful really.

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## jmcgann

Pretty good bad music, isn't it?

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## mythicfish

And since many of us agree that the guy can "play" ... we could call his instrument a "toy".
In a non-perjorative sense.

Curt ("Ornette-give -me-this-axe") Roseman

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## Dagger Gordon

He can play alright. It might not be to everyone's taste, but there's no doubt he knows what he's doing.

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## Ted Eschliman

This has been a fun thread to read. I don't know how I missed it until today, but it's especially relevant to me, as my single-course mandolins/toy guitars have been taking an increasingly larger proportion of my own "lap" time. With my 4-string Jazzbo, and recently the acquisition of 4-string Old Wave JazzDola, I have found new life musically. Tremolo never tripped my trigger (listening to bad tremolo is downright nauseating) and I've discovered new potential and sonic frontiers in finger control, vibrato, and absolute liberation in phrasing and hornlike sustain. A former frustrated guitarist, I've found the magic of 5ths tuning and its symmetry open my chop vocabulary exponentially this last decade.

I've been making the transition in the groups I've played with slowly, but a bit of epiphany, these people didn't have any preconceptions what a double-course mandolin is all about, let alone a 4-string. As long as what I'm doing is musical and fits the ensemble environment, it really shouldn't matter with my little guitar/ukulele/banjo/mango thangy. 

Ultimately, it's about making music, and I'm having the time of my life playing these great instruments.

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## jmcgann

GO TED GO!!! Nice lookin' horns too! 

I like "Mango" as the all purpose name!!!

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## Don Stiernberg

You guys are reminding me of a few things,hopefully humorous and/or pertinent--

 I've played 5 string electric a lot in bands. Originally I had a Roberts "Tiny Moore" that I got from Tiny himself. A guy comes up to the stand one night and asks "What IS that instrument?"
 I told him it was an electric mandolin and he immediately replied "OH NO IT"S NOT!" What an odd sensation-what could I say? Something like, "Well, I've spent a lot of bread on the wrong thing then, and that's odd because the guy I got it from is the best Electric mandolinist I've heard.."

 There's a legend about Glen Campbell, the great studio guitarist and backround singer who went on to become Glen Campbell..Apparently he memorized a lot of Tiny solos, thinking they were done on a guitar and undaunted by their difficulty. This may explain some of his wonderful facility.

 Johnny Gimble's EM 150(which he carries in a tennis racket bag!!)is tuned C-G-D-A from low to hi. It has a pickup wound by Leo Fender himself in the forties. That pickup may be of Loar value, who knows? And when Johnny plays this instrument 
 you can tell he digs George Barnes and Junior Barnard, yet it still seems very mandolin-ish. And of course it swings like nothing else and makes you feel really good.

 I wish I knew more about Indian music, this thread has been helpful there. John Kruth is there now studying, and his blogs are entertaining and enlightening.Is it true that to obtain mastery a young player is assigned one raga and a guru?

  Jethro once told me he didn't play much electric mandolin because he could play guitar, something like "If I want a sound like that I'd just play guitar"...still some of his tracks using the Fender four string are stunning, and he recorded the solid Gibson 8 string a couple times too. Each 
 thing seem to bring something different out of him, all of them were great sounding..

  Here in Chicago we have some great Indian percussionists, Kalyan Patak, and Sandip Berman. Sandip's band opened for the Dawg once here and he gave some very informative demos of the complex meters the music is played in. This served to remind me that plain old 4/4 is often more than I can handle.The occasional 3/4 is ok, provided we're allowed to swing..

   Phillipine Banduria? (fourths,double courses) Baroque mandolin?(a/k/a "soprano lute)...it seems various cultures and epochs of history come up with something that makes melodies in the range we think of as mandolin.I like hearing most of them, then seem to always come back to the old g-d-a-e complete with tremolo, although I do love the five string too and wish i had more opportunity to play it. Even there I look at it as a low four strings, and a high four strings. And I'll bend a la BB or try to grab clusters or blocks a la George Benson..

    Sorry to ramble... please carry on so we can all figure out what we're playing! As far as figuring out what's good or not all I'll say is another Jethroism. After listening to a band at a fest one time he said(with the famous smile).."NOT EVEN." I asked him what he meant and he said "I wouldn't like that band, not even if they was any good!"

    Thanks for all the info cats. Now back to our regularly scheduled discussion..

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## Garrett

Here's three mandolins -- a four string, a five string and an eight string. I think you'll agree they all can play the mandolin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdG7zkF-eMQ

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## Peter Hackman

> Originally Posted by  
> 
>  It's not very good music, period.
> 
> 
> 
> There's a big difference between not liking something, as a matter of opinion, and _judging it's worth as music._ 47 years of listening or not. Wow. Bow Wow.


The main difference is that the first is real, the second not.

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## Peter Hackman

> Originally Posted by  
> 
> Why are we so stuck on the gear?
> 
> 
> 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.


I thought it was a mandolin because of Bob Wills' hollering.

Actually I believe he started out with an amplified 8-string,
and I'm not sure anyone could identify what he's playing
on different cuts.

What's in a name etc.

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## Peter Hackman

> Here's an Indian banjo:
> 
> 
> 
> I kid you not, thats what its called. You strum all the strings with a flatpick in your right hand,and push buttons or keys with the other. Here's another one:
> 
> 
> 
> Does calling these things a banjo make them so?


"Plucked nyckelharpa"?

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## delsbrother

So...

I ventured into Artesia, CA's Little India yesterday (really in search of pistachio kulfi "milkshakes" and forearm-sized dosa, but that's beside the point). Of course had to check out the numerous music shoppes, and scored a bunch of CDs, including one from Snehasish Majumder I hadn't heard before (he definitely plays the mandola - though he's always called a mandolinist, LOL). Of course I also bought a Srinivas disc it turns out I already had, except it has a different title and different cover. DOH! 

But what surprised me was how many Bollywood DVD covers had images of mandolins on them. At least I thought they were mandolins, maybe they were some other instrument? Anyway, the characters were just holding them as props, like a 1920's movie star would be holding a uke in a movie poster shot. You know, man and woman, running around on the beach, _with mandolins! Obviously!_ I wish I had thought to take a cameraphone shot of some of them, but that probably would've gotten me in trouble (I definitely don't look Indian). Maybe I'll go back one day and just buy or rent a few.

Anyway, I asked some of the shop owners and turns out mandolin has been used for ages in (heavily orchestrated) Bollywood soundtracks, mostly because of the composer duo Laxmikant-Pyarelal. Perhaps this could be a more home-grown reason for Srinivas' father gifting a mandolin to his son (vs. Paul's 'he-needed-a-gimmick' reason)?

Here's another fascinating story from an Indian Blog about a man who evidently was one of the original players in those soundtracks. Was this already posted? I seems vaguely familiar...

I bought an instrumental mandolin CD that purportedly had songs from popular Indian movies played in that "soundtrack" style, and while it probably isn't for me it was certainly an interesting listen (IMO the tunes ranged from simple/catchy/bouncy - to OK that's a little saccharine - to now I want to kill myself). Pretty heavy on the tremelo, in an _O Sole Mio_ kinda way... 

IIRC someone on these boards once mentioned mandolin's connection to Indian film, but I don't think it was ever discussed at length. Can't seem to find that post anymore. Anyone remember?

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## Spruce

Man, I don't know how I missed this thread the first time around, but that was a great read....
Thanks all!

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## JimD

Back to the topic of mandolin in Indian music...

While looking for a recording of one of my favorite Indian instruments, the jalatarangam (porcelain bowls tuned with water and struck with wooden dowels), I stumbed upon a recording of a mandolin and jalatarang duet recorded in India around 1930.

It is called "Jala-Tarang" and is found on the cd The Secret Museum of Mankind Vol. 5 (Shanachie).

I got it from iTunes -- certainly worth a listen.

Then you can all go back to sorting out what is or isn't a mandolin.

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## delsbrother

That was also a radio show (The Secret Museum of the Air on WFMU) and it's full of all kinds of crazy stuff! You can subscribe to their podcast (which they have been updating lately) and listen to the clip mentioned above for free. Sadly, the show is now out of production, but it's great that they're providing them via the Web.

SM podcasts

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## Spruce

Here's an interesting mandolin from Ebay India...

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This is a wonderfully erudite discussion, but can we see more pics of hot chicks with cigars in their mouths?

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