the.com/mandolin
a tiny eight-string thunderstorm that fits in your lap and rattles your ribs.
means A small, pear-shaped stringed instrument with four pairs of strings, plucked or strummed and often played with a rapid tremolo to sustain its bright, ringing notes.
from From Italian 'mandolino,' a diminutive of 'mandola' — the larger lute-family instrument it shrank down from. The word traces back through Italian to Late Latin 'pandura' and ultimately Greek 'pandoura,' a three-stringed lute, so the name has been quietly shrinking and reshaping itself across the Mediterranean for a very long time.
- Doubled strings
- Eight strings in four pairs, tuned identically.
- Violin twin
- Tuned exactly like a violin, just plucked.
- Italian roots
- Descended from the lute via 17th-century Italy.
- Tremolo trick
- Rapid picking sustains notes a single pluck cannot.
- Vivaldi fan
- He wrote concertos for it in the 1700s.
chris thile — american mandolinist who won a grammy award in 2012 and hosts live from here
bill monroe — created bluegrass music in kentucky in the 1930s-40s, pioneered modern mandolin technique
anouar brahem — tunisian mandolinist blending arabic music with jazz, recorded since the 1990s