While I started out with one mandolin from China, camouflaged under a UK brand, the two months that have passed since I got that one have been quite hectic and added several additional instruments to what is beginning to look like a collection.
I have published elsewhere some of what was going on, but nobody read it, so I’ll try again here.
First, I must confess that my initial fear of this turning into something commercial has come true. I have not been able to resist buying more things, and it points at the nature of music playing, as it happens today (and probably also many days before that).
It is also exciting, and I am not unhappy with my additional purchases. It fills my life in a way that I feel that I needed. I guess, this is the same as when people get excited about buying home stereo systems, golf equipment, or anything else. It moves from being a hobby about doing something into a hobby of buying and having something – a collector’s hobby.
There are some details that bring us to that:
Every instrument you might get will be talked down by most other musicians as a “beginner’s instrument”. No matter the price of it, no matter how tough a planning of your money you needed to do, some others will have been able to gather more money and buy something more expensive, and they will want to brag about it by calling you and your instrument “introduction level”.
Musical instruments may, at times, be made by enthusiasts who enjoy that process and have a special talent for making an instrument sound good. These luthiers, as they are called if they build instruments with strings, are in it for the joy of it, mostly, but they also want to live. Spending many hours on building an instrument means that this will become expensive. But then there is an industry as well, producing for the masses. They use more rational production methods, are better at weighing cost of materials with the resulting price of the ready products, and they produce more affordable instruments – however, at different levels, so that the most affordable is less good than the less affordable. You’ll be led into a path of buying at one level and then immediately wanting to upgrade, and then again.
The industry of accessories is good at explaining to people that even such a thing as a “pick” – a tiny slice of plastic – needs to be special developed, branded, and expensive. And you need many of them, because of the mood you are in, the music you play that day, and the risk of forgetting it somewhere all meaning that you’ll have to keep buying expensive small pieces of plastic. Strings must be replaced very often, and the string manufacturers have managed to trick people into believing that good strings are more expensive and must be replaced even more often, so also here, you’ll need to keep buying. And the list goes on. You can’t just buy an instrument, one pick, one set of strings, and then simply start playing. You’ll have to be playing with one hand and grabbing more accessories with the other.
Some brands and models of instruments are considered iconic, meaning that your aim, according to the community of players of this kind of instrument, must be to get to own one of those. Playing just any mandolin, for instance, won’t do for anything but the first learning process – especially if you are a professional musician, or a wannabe, you must get an instrument that corresponds to your status. We all know about such famous violinists who play a famous Stradivarius violin, bought for several millions, and people may even go to a concert to hear that instrument more than the artist or the work. So, even if you already own a great instrument, that won’t do if you are going to become famous.
We are all on our way to become famous, professional musicians. Just about every book or course or discussion in musician’s forums have an underlying understanding that you play music to become part of a band, an orchestra, or become a known individual in the music business. While there are books that try to explain how you can have fun playing music and singing with your family, these aren’t the typical type. Playing at the camp fire is also such a thing that is done as a side activity by those who normally play at a more serious level. And even though 90% of people aren’t there, they are told all the time this is where they are meant to be, supposed to be aiming at, so they must buy equipment accordingly.
The good old “great tools are half of the work” idea makes you, yourself, believe that a better instrument and all the right accessories will help you learn, help you play better, and make you look like a real musician.
When you feel that you are getting into this new hobby, you’ll get enthusiastic and want to know all about it. You’ll find out that there are, in fact, many old, even antique, mandolins on the market for small money, and you would want to have one of those, easily becoming two, three, or more, to feel the historical winds blowing when looking at them, touching them, and playing them. And, talking to others about them, as this phenomenon is very much carried by a habit by musicians to talk about such things, making you feel that this is part of the package.
Maybe there are even more details in it, but the end effect is that I now, after my first, initial purchase of a mandolin, have supplemented with more mandolins and other instruments. The original dream of sitting in a hammock strung up between palm trees on a remote beach having fun playing happy songs has been wrapped into commercialism and greed, now being more of a dream of being and becoming, and having. Actually playing and enjoying life has moved to a lower rank on the list of things I need to do with music.
Some of the additional purchases are based on the fact that there in Sweden used to be a famous and very productive manufacturer of mandolins, called Levin, and even though this company closed some 45 years ago, there are still always many instruments for sale on various second hand markets. I have got a few of those: different models from 1947, 1949, and 1954, and despite their age, they still play nicely and have that special feeling of history over them. They are made from solid wood, not veneer, but I know, of course, that they were made commercially, for a company to earn money on them, so they were made for people to be able to buy them, back then.
Some others are not mandolins at all. As I had expected, by getting into a new instrument, my old interest for other instruments I’ve played would come back to life. Many years ago, I learned how to play the piano, later also the guitar, and if taking everything into account, from a long life, also such a tin whistle and drums are on the list. With everything from my musical graveyard again coming to live, all options are open, including those about looking into instruments that I once wanted to play but never did.
I have long wanted to try playing a steel-stringed guitar. My guitar experience from the old days was based on nylon-stringed classical guitars, focusing on finger play rather than strumming, on classical works rather than pop, rock, or jazz, and I wanted to move a bit into all that. So, I found an old, used, dreadnought guitar, and later a lute-shaped guitar with steel strings – an almost new instrument but, due to the limited interest amongst musicians for such instruments, at a very low second-hand price.
Almost no music is really great without an underlying bass line, and since I have now got a device that allows me to record the music on the computer, along with a microphone, I also got myself a bass guitar. Then I can play the low-pitched bass on one track, supplementary guitar chords on another, and then the melody line with decorations on the mandolin on a third, this way becoming a complete band, all on my own.
Of course, a mandolin is really high-pitched, and it isn’t suitable for all kinds of music. When looking around for examples of nice mandolin music, I ran into a bigger version of it, which I have actually shown already as the illustrational photo on the first article in this series: it is a longer necked instrument, inspired by the Greek bouzouki, with a bigger body, basically taken from a typical Portuguese instrument, such as the Portuguese guitar, this way producing a deeper and richer sound. It is known as an Irish bouzouki, but there are varieties of it with slightly shorter necks that then go under the name octave mandolin. Also, there is another kind of instrument, just a bit bigger than the mandolin, but smaller than the octave mandolin, often called a mandola, or in some countries an alto mandolin, or something else – there isn’t much agreement across the world on the names of instruments. Well, I have got one of each of octave mandolin and mandola. These are much nicer to listen to, to be honest, than a mandolin, but they lack the sharp kick that sometimes is just what is needed, so there is room for all kinds of instruments.
Diving deep into the world of mandolins quickly taught me that many people in this sphere are quite conservative and live in the past. Especially in the USA, it is possible to publish a book like “Mandolin for Dummies”, that state how there exist two kinds of mandolins, one with a curl, the other without. Oh, and then an old type with a bowl-shaped back, but it doesn’t sound well. Needless to say, this is utter nonsense, but many Americans seem to think this way. They consider every other type of mandolin to be wrong and useless, and they want basically only the one with a curl, which is a copy of a 100-year-old American made mandolin, used for bluegrass. If they don’t play bluegrass, they might want the one without a curl, which is otherwise identical. The denouncement of the bowl back mandolin is somewhat illogical, as this is the type of mandolin that historically came first and is used a lot, especially in the Mediterranean countries and in classical music. Also, the Portuguese have a tradition for a different type with a flat back and front, and with a larger body, coming in a couple of shapes, sounding much nicer than the American ones. In fact, when looking back during the last 100 years of production in the field, it looks like by far most mandolins are of these types, and they are even produced by some luthiers in the USA as well, which just isn’t noticed by all the people living there. I have got one of these Portuguese mandolins, made in Portugal, and another, made in Romania.
The deep dive also taught me something else: there is a very big world of musical instruments out there! Portugal is rich on different varieties of instruments in the guitar family, including such that later became re-invented as the ukulele, but there are many more. While the USA-based forums I looked at, and trusted, initially told me that there wasn’t any production of mandolins left in Europe, I’ve found out that this is wrong. Like most other things Americans believe in. There are many manufacturers of musical instruments in Europe, and even though there are just a few of them that produce instruments at an industrial scale, you can actually have very many different instruments on a by-order basis from many workshops and individual luthiers around the European area. At least one large shop, Thomann, based in Germany, does a great job of making all kinds of instruments available, and even at fair prices. To that, of course, the huge “back catalogue” of old instruments that seem to live forever and are for sale at all prices.
There is plenty of material to work with in Europe for anyone interested in music.
I learned along the way, when studying this, that there is a very nice sounding instrument in portugal that is called a Portuguese Guitar. It is not like a classical (Spanish) guitar, but actually more like a big mandolin with six courses of double strings and a scale length (the length of the vibrating part of the strings) somewhere in the middle between a mandolin and a classical guitar, and it has a big, onion-shaped body with flat back and front. This allows for a rich and varied playing repetoir, only missing the deeper tones. It is little known outside of Portugal, unfortunately, but there, it is an important instrument, especially in the Fado music, where it is most often part of a trio of instruments, the others being a guitar and a bass, to accompany a Fado singer, all together producing an inciting music experience for the audience.
I was so lucky to stumble over such an instrument for sale at an online auction, getting it at a fair price, and I am now waiting for it to appear in the mail.
In Spain, there is a similar instrument, called a Spanish Laúd, and there is a smaller variant of that, basically mandolin-sized and sounding, the Bandurria.
While a classical guitar, and it’s steel-stringed varieties, can provide a comprehensive tonal repetoire and allow for the musician to play almost anything, the more distinct sound of the smaller instruments with double-strings add something more direct and appealing to some music. I wonder why we don’t, by tradition, have such instruments in the Nordic countries? Apart from the many mandolins by Levin and a few other companies, of course, but these now seem to be historical instruments from an industrial period, a thing that was there as a result of industrialism and worker economy, making it possible to both produce a lot for a little, and for people to buy that. The folk music of the Nordics isn’t full of this kind of instruments, though.
So, as for now, my musical journey, starting out with a Chinese copy of an antique American mandolin, has led me to the discoveries of both a rich musical instrument tradition and production in Europe, and to several (to me) new instruments and ways of making music.
I am now very much interested in actually getting to play some of my new instruments, to feel the energy of creating, and to enjoy the sound of them, while I have more or less cut off the element of talking with like-minded in forums, as this seems to lead to only negative emotions – about having cheap instruments, being a beginner who is not as good as them, etc., and while all such claims and statements might be true, I need to hear something else from my surroundings, something confirming and uplifting, so it is all about finding the right surroundings, I suppose.
It’s a rich life, and there are very many details in it to discover and enjoy – and it is possible to pick and choose, to some extend, what should be in it.
I loved that historical deep dive! And point #5 resonated with me. I'm tired of this new trend of becoming the best (and making money out of it if possible) for every single hobby or interest we have. It puts so much pressure and defeats the purpose of having a hobby.
I enjoyed your post a lot, because I am also fascinated by musical instruments and have acquired a few along the way.