Product Description

How is the Carnatic Mandolin different? Mandolin Srinivas (a) chose the electric solid block (Mandolin) as the basis; (b) used single strings instead of pairs, and (c) also added a fifth string (on the suggestion of his father U Satyanarayana), which enhanced the acoustic range of the instrument. As such the acoustic range of the instrument is now three complete octaves and a half octave. Besides the above, U.Srinivas also established a unique style in handling the instrument i.e. developed new fingering techniques and also established the hammer-on playing and also the gamaka playing techniques on the mandolin, all of which required deisgn and form changes from the western style Mandoline. In Indian classical music and Indian light music, the mandolin, which bears little resemblance to the European mandolin, is likely to be tuned to E-B-E-B. As there is no concept of absolute pitch in Indian classical music, any convenient tuning maintaining these relative pitch intervals between the strings can be used. Another prevalent tuning with these intervals is C-G-C-G, which corresponds to Sa-Pa-Sa-Pa in the Indian carnatic classical music style. This tuning corresponds to the way violins are tuned for carnatic classical music. Construction: It usually has four pairs of strings that run over a fretted neck. However, the Indian version of Mandolin, which is not the conventional mandolin, uses just 5 strings. The strings are played with the fingers of the left hand and plucked with a plectrum held in the right hand.