History of the mandolin in the US
Can anyone say when the Figaro Spanish Students had their tour in the US? It would also be interesting if someone could pipe up with the history of the mandolin orchestras -- while I've heard that numerous such groups existed, I know nothing about them. --- Eirikr 09:01, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)
According to Paul Sparks in the Classical Mandolin, they debuted on January 2, 1880 in New York City.
Jim
Needs Non-US material
This article is too US-Centric right now. It needs information on mandolin music from Europe and Latin America (esp Brazil and choro). I'll take a stab at moving the US material to a separate section and adding some information on Brazil. Hopefully someone who knows better can edit it if i mess up the format. --- glauber 10Aug05 19:37 UTC
Here's a good article on the history of the mandolin: http://mandolincafe.com/archives/briefhistory.html --- glauber 19:23, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, needs a section on how it was played in its country of origin, Italy. Also spread to the Venetian sphere of influence (all the way down both coasts and islands of the Adriatic and Ionian Seas). In other words, parts of Slovenia, Croatia, Albania, Greece. Use in serenades and cantatas.
The mandolin as used in Central Asia. I saw a concert of music from Turkmenistan in Chicago. Lo and behold, a mandolin and accordeon duet. As mandolin spread around the world, replaced indigenous instruments? All this could be included.
I added a very brief comment on modern bluegrass mandolin in central Europe. Someone who knows this better than me should expand it! User:blauwkoe
Sustained notes
"Like the guitar, the mandolin is a poorly sustaining instrument. A note cannot be maintained for an arbitrary time as with a violin. Its higher pitch makes this problem more severe than with the guitar, and as a result, use of tremolo (rapid picking on a single note) is sometimes used to emulate a sustained note."
This is paricularly on acoustic versions, right? On electrcic Mandolins (I beleive they do exist and perhaps sould there fore be added to the article), this tremolo can be replaced by a guitar-style sustain pedal.
You are partly right. I have an electric one and I have used a guitar sustain pedal on this with fairly good effect. But not as good as the guitar, possibly because of the difference in the frequency ranges. As far as I remember, the sustain on the lower strings (which have freqencies matching that of guitar was better than the higher ones (with much higher frequencies than that of guitar) - Wikicheng 04:22, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
Mandoline Food Slicer
Wikipedia redirects Mandoline (type of food slicer) to Mandolin (musical instrument). There really should be an article (at least a stub) about that...
Mandolin Family
Anyone have any pictures of these other mando types? I'd love to see a bass and a piccolo for instance, but I'm very unlikely to find them on my own.