At the St. Louis Tional I sat in playing flute on a small but vigorous session.
Professional level musicians (I didn’t play much).
There were a couple of fellows playing mandolins. I listened carefully
to one of them after the other left. He was playing an old oval holed
Gibson and he was playing beautifully, in fact, but he was hard
to hear. This seems to be the standard sort of mando for ITM;
it’s hard to hear.
Bluegrass mando is typically set up like a fiddle with the F-shaped hole
along the sides. This makes for projection, I believe, as it does in
arch topped guitars. Also a thicker pick is used and people
really dig in. I’ve heard these played in non-ITM jams and they
seem to compete with fiddles and banjos OK.
Has anybody heard this sort of instrument played in this way
in an ITM session, I mean a fairly loud session? I can’t see
any reason not to play one this way, except it typically
isn’t done.
It might be more useful to compare flat and carved top mandos. Orville Gibson invented F-hole and oval hole mandos with carved tops, and his designs are widely copied.
There are also makers out there making flat tops with oval holes, but the sound difference isn’t as easy to generalize about. It might be likelier that the carved top mandos you see are more likely to be higher quality handmade instruments. There are cheap F-style mandos, but you might be better off with a flat top at that price point.
I’m a longtime (non-ITM) mandolin player. I have owned an early-20s Gibson A-0, contemporary Weber Beartooth, and now a 1950 Gibson A-50. The A-0 was a round-hole model, and the other two are f-hole mandos.
I agree that an f-hole mandolin is generally louder, or at least it tends to carry further. The trade-off, IMO, is a slightly sharper, and less resonant tone. Of course, setup counts for a lot, as does playing technique.
Honestly, I’ve never felt that any non-amplified mandolin could hold its own in an ITM session involving more than three or four players. It’s great on recordings, and in very small ensembles, but not at the typical large, booming session. It just gets buried. I still play mandolin a lot, but never bring it to sessions.
I sometimes sit in on an Old Time acoustic jam with maybe ten players,
and there is a mando that is quite loud. We sometimess have
fiddles and banjos. So I thought there was some
hope. If you play it with a thick pick like a blue grass instrument.
But maybe not.
Well, there is the option of playing a four-string banjo, then.
I have, by the way, a very good blue grass mandolin.
The people from whom I bought it, musicians themselves
who play mando and fiddle and whom I’m sure are honest,
assured me that if I played it hard I would compete
with fiddles. Maybe not. I’ve yet to try.
Certainly I can play louder (not necessarily better) on that mando in my blue grassy style
than the people at the session I mentioned.
You’ll hear the mandolin in a large session if the player chops chords, but that’s not ITM, and psses people off! Yes, lots of mando players move over to tenor banjo in order to play melody and be heard. Of course, tenor banjos also pss people off!
I couldn’t say about “typically”, for while mandolin isn’t a common instrument for ITM hereabouts, you see both kinds when they do play them and no one seems to care one way or the other. The fellow that is the predominant, if occasional, mando presence at our sessions plays an F-holed design IIRC, and dollars to doughnuts he uses a hard pick, 'cause he’s plenty loud. Great melody player, chops of exceeding excellence, and a good leader for chunes, if a bit old-timey for my tastes. Mixes together his reels and hornpipes at times, but what the hell. Us Trad Police just go ahead and do our thing, too. A sort of “getting back on topic” and cleansing the palate, like.
A couple of points: 1) At an ITM session and in the thick of things, other than for the practical aspect of being heard when starting tunes, why do we need to be heard, to stand out? I’m fine with simply being able to hear myself (a most necessary condition to be sure), and there’s no question that I’m contributing to the “wall of sound” no matter what. Where will it all end? An instrumental arms race, an Orc’s chorus of louder and yet louder competing* instruments?
*(a horrid thought, and of course not in the nuanced sense that you used the word above, Jim)
And: 2) PLEASE, for the love of all that is holy, stop calling ITM sessions “jams”.
F-hole archtops don’t have the sweet, full tone of a nice oval-hole, but in a loud session they do cut through significantly better. Flat top oval holes can’t generally compete where volume and cut are concerned, and a heavy pick does maximise both volume and depth of tone.
That said, on my own f-hole F style mando I prefer heavy picks for bluegrass and rock, but thin for ITM.
Tim O’Brien does sterling work in both American and Celtic genres with an f-hole A style archtop.
I take my arch top F style to sessions and it does pretty well. The main session I go to is old timey with a good dose of Celtic and nobody cares if I throw in chords.
I find that if I hold the mando on my knee, well away from my body, the back doesn’t get muffled against my belly and it sounds louder (at least to me).
Truthfully, I get tired of playing whistle on all tunes, so I switch back and forth depending on the tune.
Another important aspect to mandolins in ITM and Bluegrass is simply the instrument itself. A Bluegrass mandolin has certain characteristics that you won’t find in other mandolins of similar design. BG players will search constantly for ‘banjo killers’ and are usually willing to pay much more for them. It isn’t at all unusual for a BG mandolin to cost thousands. It has to do with hand graduated tops and tap tuned components. The average ITM mandolinist (myself included) seems to not spend as much. A great many will look for good, inexpensive ones, but never consider spending $4,000 - $25,000. There are a few BG players with instruments valued at $250,000. I play a $700 F-5 style mandolin for ITM. A friend of mine plays BG on an $8400 Collings. From across the room they look identical. His mandolin is at least five times louder than mine. It nearly jumps out of your hands with all the energy it produces. There really is a huge difference in the characteristics of a fine, hand crafted instrument compared to a production line mandolin.
That’s not to say that you won’t find the occassional banjo killer for under a grand, but you do get what you pay for. An instrument designed and built to compete in the Blugrass world is a different animal.
Another important thing that BG players seem to understand better than ITM players is the need to have a mandolin properly set up. The fit between the bridge and the top is critical for the mandolin. Very, very few mandolins come set up from the factory. While many guitars will play well out of the box, a mandolin requires set up to perform at its best. BG players also tend to experiment far more with picks and strings.
I’m not sure why this all is. Perhaps it’s because so many ITM players use the mandolin as a second instrument while BG players tend to focus on only their one instrument. ITM players too, especially guys who play mostly whistle, tend not to want to spend the money. Maybe it’s because a really top whistle is comparitively inexpensive. You can get a great whistle for a meager $200 - $300, but that barely gets you to the table in the mandolin world.
Of course, not all BG players spend huge sums. But those who don’t seem to have the same issues as the ITM guys. They say their mandolin is lost in the mix. When they finally up the ante for a ‘Bluegrass cannon’, they invariably are thrilled with the result.
Thanks. Good news, this. I have a 3000 dollar collings bluegrass mandolin,
A shape. Sounds like there’s hope. I haven’t yet found a session
to play it in but that’s a matter of time, I reckon.
I probably need to have this instrument set up better. I took a class from
a very good player who suggested there was more in it
than it could presently yield. I’m meanwhile learning to
play it, which is a lot of fun.
I definitely prefer the sound of an oval-hole mandolin, especially in ITM and folk music. Some A-style or F-style mandolins are louder, it really depends on the particular mandolin, but mainly they’re used in certain types of music because they don’t resonant, they have a “choppier” sound.
Regardless of which mandolin you choose, there are just certain instruments that are, by nature, loud. Fiddle, banjo, and accordion are a few that come to mind. These instruments are always going to be at the forefront and that’s why they’re usually the lead instruments. Back in the days before amps, I think that’s why the fiddle was the favored instruments at dances, for its volume. And a cheap, Chinese-made fiddle or accordion will be much louder than the most expensive, well-made mandolin or guitar.
Then, there are other instruments that aren’t so loud that mix well together. For example, a guitar, mandolin, and whistle combination works well together. They all have less volume, so none of them gets drowned out by the other.
Yes, I’ve seen one of these at Music Folk in St. Louis, and played
it a bit too. The one they have is hard to finger, though probably
not excessively so. Nicely made.
Ouch. That’s gotta hurt. I knew one fellow who had this big low-A whistle (yes, he was quite tall and had large hands). It sounded like Julia Child lilting chunes. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.
Man, would love to get one of those Nationals… not in the budget at this point though.
If you have a Collings F hole mando Jim, you aren’t going to find anything significantly louder except the National, I know, I have a Collings myself and I’ve tried a bunch of other mandos. I’m with Nano though, can’t see a need to stand out in a session, and the Collings should have enough projection for all but the really big, loud sessions. You will however have to string the thing with something other than extralights… Better work on those fingers.
