Re: choro setup
Hi Daniel,
There's not a lot of use trying to modify your instrument to make it sound more Brazilian. The more you try, the less your A Jr. will sound like itself, and the more it will sound like it's trying to be something it's not.
That's ok, too. There are plenty of North American mandolinists playing choro on arched mandolins (Mike Marshall, John Reischman, Will Patton), and none of them have felt the need to modify their mandolins. Will Patton, btw, plays a Gibson A, so you can check out his recordings to get an idea of the kind of sound you might expect (he features a choro or two on many of his recordings).
I spent a couple of years playing choro on an arched mandolin, and went through some of the motions of changing strings and picks. Everything I tried took me further away from a good sound on my instrument, and I wound up always reverting to the tried-and-true J74s and thick triangular pick.
You're lucky... you're headed to the Centrum Choro Workshop. It's a great event. And you'll get plenty of exposure to all sorts of instrument choices. Lots of people will still be playing their North American axes. And an alarming number of people will have brought their bandolins, too. Make sure you take advantage of anyone's offer to let you play theirs. You don't know what a bandolim is like until you've actually held a good one in your hands and played it.
FWIW, I attended the 2010 Workshop, and was lucky to be standing in the right place when Al was in the mood to hear someone else play his Batista. That moment instantly changed my attitude about what I wanted to play, and I had my own bandolim, a Barros, within a couple of months.
You have to make your own decisions. And you should experiment a little with strings and picks, especially because it costs so little. But my advice is to let your A Jr. be an A Jr. and learn to play choro on it as it is, or put your hard-earned money into a real bandolim if you want an instrument to give you THAT sound.
Originally Posted by
Jim Garber
I honestly think that sounding more choro-ish is more in the player than in the instrument and barring getting yourself a Brazilian instrument, you could do just fine on your A Jr.
+1. Well put, Jim.
Also (while I'm editing), if you're trying out strings, give a set of light-gauge Elixirs a shot. Hamilton de Holanda uses Elixirs, and so, by that measure, they're the real thing. Among the big producers distributed in the US, they're the nearest thing to Brazilian strings, and they also work well on arched mandolins. You might try laying your hands on a set of real Brazilian strings, like Rouxinols, but they'd be hard to find, expensive, they sound pretty awful on arched mandolins, and they're quite delicate and breakable.
Enjoy, Daniel. It's a lot of fun playing your way through this particular evolution!
Doug Hoople
Adult-onset Instrumentalist (or was that addled-onset?)
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