In a local cafe at mid-afternoon, unsuspecting ears suddenly perk up and heads turn towards a mandolin's chime. The sound commands attention. Perhaps this is due to its clarity or maybe because of the novelty of its sound, but whatever the root cause, the initial call of the mandolin unmistakeably piques the ear's curiosity. Continuing with a comfortable command of the instrument and a good … [Read more...]
About Chords for the Mandolin
Mandolin has a pitch range that starts from G below middle C and spans 3 octaves or more. It's short string length means a person's hands can spread over more frets than larger instruments. Moving up the neck, the player will notice a greater ease of reach counteracted by cramped spaces, crowding fingers into miniature shapes to play chords that are easier down low on the neck. This necessitates … [Read more...]
Fitting Into the Big Picture
The mandolin, as well as members of the mandolin family and many instruments that use the same tuning, offers a wide range of musical options. When compared to other instruments, the mandolin tends to focus its output more tightly or, perhaps better said, less broadly than some familiar and popular instruments such as piano or guitar. Is this a weakness in the mandolin's part? Not really. When … [Read more...]
Scales, Modes & Tonality
Modes have been around even longer than the mandolin. The illustration here is from the 1500's, from a manuscript of Spanish vihuela music. You can read for yourself, if you understand early Spanish and if you understand early Spanish music theory, that this music is for Vihuela in A (fa) using the second tone, or Dorian mode (I think!). So as cool and as new to some ears as this may seem, … [Read more...]
Gravity and Levity in Music
Readers please note that the purpose of this piece is to offer food for thought more than to define an element or draw a conclusion and your comments are welcome. This is a discourse in music theory although scientifically very soft. The point is simply to better understand the complex nature of what we hear in music. What is Gravity and Levity in music? Gravity/Levity, or the Gravity/Levity … [Read more...]
Jazz Chord Theory
This area of this fledgling website is, itself, a work in progress at this time. There is a lot of information online about jazz chords and music theory. What is planned for this site is to offer a beginning reference to accompany other articles on the site to help with a better understanding of that content. This will never be an authoritative source on the subject of music theory or jazz but … [Read more...]
Where This May Lead
The internet offers us such a wonderful tool for communications, offering many media sources to experience and to learn from. We are lucky today to have such convenient access to so much information available at our wish and not the wish of someone else. Our wish is to share with you and hope you will share back. We hope you enjoy reading and enjoy learning from the content you find on this … [Read more...]
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