Wednesday 21 September 2011

The De'il among the Tailors

Here's a northern jig that I've always loved, finally recorded for posterity.

The instrument is a Richwood octave mandola with all courses tuned in unison. This seems like a good opportunity to talk about the classification of eight-stringed instruments - that's what blogs are for right? Getting things off your chest that other people may or may not care about? If you don't care, just watch the video. If you do care, here are my thoughts.

There are three common eight-stringed instruments beginning with the 'mando' prefix (we'll ignore bouzoukis for now - that's a whole other discussion): the mandolin, tenor mandola, and octave mandola or octave mandolin. The great debate is whether the largest of these should be called an octave mandola or an octave mandolin. The answer, technically, is neither. It should be called a tenor mandola, but that would just be confusing.

The word 'mandolin' is a derivation of 'mandolino', which means 'little mandola'. That is to say, the mandola is the original instrument and the mandolin is the soprano version. The octave mandola, as we call it now, is a tenor version of the original mandola. So, instead of mandolin, tenor mandola, and octave mandola, we ought to talk about a mandolin, mandola, and tenor mandola. See, I said it was confusing, so I think I'll just live with the old debate about whether it's an octave mandola or an octave mandolin...

Anyway, the video...

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