Music Technology & Sports Junction

A MANDOLIN is a musical instrument in the lute family (plucked, or strummed) usually with four courses ofstrings, tuned in perfect fifths and plucked with a plectrum. It is the soprano member of a family that includes the mandola,octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass and descends from the mandore.

There are many styles of mandolin. Three varieties are common, the bowl-backed mandolin, the carved-top mandolin and theflat-top mandolin. Bowl-back instruments get their name from the shape of the back of the instrument, which is shaped like a large bowl. The carved-top or arch-top mandolin has a much shallower bowl in the back, as well as an arched top, both carved out of wood. The flat-top mandolin is similar to a guitar, using thin sheets of wood for the body, braced on the inside for strength. Each style of instrument has its own sound quality and has been adopted for a particular form of music. Bowl-backed mandolins are primarily instruments of European classical music. Carved-top instruments are used for folk music and bluegrass. Flat-top instruments are less specific to a music genre.

Other varieties of mandolin center around the strings, and include Milanese, Lombard, Brescian and other six-course types, as well as four-string models (one string per course), and the Sicilian twelve-string (three strings per course) model. There have also been made instruments with sixteen-strings (four strings per course).

Much of mandolin development has revolved around the soundboard (the top). Pre-mandolin instruments were quiet instruments, strung with as many as six courses of gut strings, and were plucked with the fingers or with a quill. However, modern instruments are louder, using four courses of metal strings, which exert more pressure than the gut strings. The modern soundboard has been designed to withstand the pressure of metal strings that would break the earlier instruments. The soundboard comes in many shapes—but generally round or teardrop-shaped, sometimes with scrolls or other projections. There is usually one or more sound holes in the soundboard, either round, oval, or shaped like a calligraphic F (f-hole). A round or oval sound hole may be covered or bordered with decorative rosettes or purfling.