Musical instruments come in many shapes and sizes. In the bluegrass world we are familiar with six common ones plus a few extra. In the world of fretted instruments you only need one string if you’re good. Our ancestors probably made music that way when stringed instruments were first invented. Even to this day a two string fretted instrument is still commonly played:
For those of you who don’t have time for the video, keep reading. Although multitonal music is interesting for music scholars and a few others, you certainly don’t want to bring a cifteli to your next bluegrass jam. (Well maybe if you were the premier master of the instrument it might improve some of the jams I’ve been to). But suffice it to say, you will not see a cifteli in Lodi at the fall campout next month. Maybe you’ll see a nickelharpa if the old time fiddlers are there in force but I doubt it. Rare instruments are rare at bluegrass jams for a good reason but I still love to see them if they’re played well.
So one is the minimum number of strings for music and two is a number that can make pretty good music (actually you will see on the cifteli that most of the melody comes from one string and the second string acts as a drone a lot). How many strings do you need?
Violinists (sorry, fiddle players) mostly know the story of a violinist (I think it might have been Niccolo Paganinni) who would wow his audience by playing with virtuosity and then clipping string after string to produce much the same beautiful music.
Don’t clip your strings. You need every string you’ve got, especially when playing fast paced bluegrass music. But maybe more strings might be even better.
I once listened to a band called 27 strings at the Vern Stage in 2014. They were good but what I most remember is the clever name they had. Excluding the Dobro, their band was composed of the same number of strings as Bill Monroe’s original Bluegrass Boys band. Bass, banjo, fiddle, guitar, mandolin. That’s the classic bluegrass arrangement. Flatt and Scruggs made the Dobro legitimate but good bluegrass can be played by almost any instrument, I think (cifteli?)
What if you add extra strings to the classic 27? Would that sound good? Well obviously adding the six strings of the Dobro can sound very good. What about adding extra strings to the standard instruments?
Not a bad idea. I’ve heard fiddlers (like the great Michael Cleveland for example) play five string fiddles to good effect. Who wouldn’t want to hear a guy like Michael play violin and viola for you at the same time? I think if Michael played the cifteli at a concert I would enjoy it.
In fact, all bluegrass instruments come with extra strings as an option. We just had a concert here in Sonoma County by the Italian bluegrass band, Red Wine. Their bassist plays a five string. Joel Landsberg of the Kruger Brothers also plays one. I’ve actually played a five string bass which I borrowed at a campout for a band scramble. Unfortunately the fifth string was removed and it was modified to be a standard four string bass. (It sounded really good though and we won). I’m not a good bassist at all but I wondered who might have been able to make that extra string sound really good.
My primary instrument is the mandolin. It’s tuned to the same notes as the violin and I have wondered about whether it would be fun to try the related instrument one fifth down, the mandola (the equivalent of the viola for violinists). I still think about it but why not just combine the whole thing like fiddlers do and make my eight string mandolin into a ten string instrument?
That ten string instrument does exist. It’s called a cittern. I have yet to hear a cittern played. It’s often used in Irish music. I have never seen it played in a bluegrass jam and I doubt I ever will (unless I buy one and bring it on a lark). For bluegrass music, I’d probably tune the cittern like a mandolin but with a C on the low string like a five string fiddle. But maybe I’d retune to an open gcgcd for St. Patrick’s Day. Here are the most common tunings:
- Standard Tuning |C2G2D3A3D4
- Mandolin low C |C2G2D3A3E4
- Irish Tuning |D2G2D3A3D4
- Mandolin High B |G2D3A3E4B4
- Modal D |D2A2D3A3D4
How about guitar? Do extra stringed variants exist? Of course they do. The first guitar I ever owned was a twelve string guitar. I found it in a closet when I moved into a new apartment in Connecticut. I never could track down the rightful owner so I gave the very nice Yamaha twelve string to my brother who actually played guitar.
The venerable banjo of course has multiple tunings. What bluegrass jammer hasn’t been frustrated but a banjoist’s efforts to retune? But we still sit there and endure it because the banjo is so important to our music. Extra strings on a banjo could be useful. The bluegrass (and clawhammer) five string banjo evolved along with a four string tenor banjo popular still today in Irish music. The tenor banjo is tuned similarly to the mandolin actually.
Extra stringed versions of the five string banjo do exist. Many are based on guitar tuning, perhaps so that guitarists can get the illusion that they can play the banjo. Taylor Swift plays one. I think that’s great! We need more banjo pickers and if you want to make the instrument more popular, get Taylor Swift to play one!
What about the Dobro? What alternate string arrangements might be possible for that noble late comer instrument to the bluegrass pantheon? I saved that for last but I probably should have started with it because the whole idea for this article came from a chance encounter in Oregon.
I was sitting in a group with my friends Pat and Neal. Neal had an unusual Dobro with seven strings instead of six. I could see Pat’s eyes light up as he coveted the instrument and I wondered what was so special about it. I’ve since learned that seven string Dobros are especially suited to western swing music. I’m not a Dobro player but apparently that middle e added to the standard gbdgbd tuning makes a difference. Neal tells me that seven and eight string guitars also exist. That’s a different kettle of fish (versus a standard twelve string guitar that pretty much plays like a six string).
Good vibrations. Strings can sound good and we can never have enough of them unless there are just enough of them to sound good. Pick solid and may however many strings you choose to play sound their best.
