Talk:Mandolin

Pop Culture/Trivia?
Should there be any mention of famous fictional mandolin players in literature, t.v. etc? Possibly Captain Corelli? 125.236.41.114 (talk) 04:27, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

With the factual popular culture section the length it is? I would suggest cutting that down a bit first. --90.240.226.219 (talk) 23:01, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

The Mandolin and early 90s music
I think just about every 90s alt rock band used a mandolin...

Japan
I wrote an article about the mandolin in Japan. Can I add this? Please correct anything if I'm wrong ;)


 * The mandolin stir a boom when Raffaele Calace visited to Japan in 1924. And still there is a lot of Mandolin Orchestra.
 * Mandolin Orchestra in Japan consists of Mandolin(1st, 2nd), Mandola Tenore(Octave Mandola, not Tenor Mandola), Mandocello, Guitar, and Double Bass. Mandolone, Flute, Clarinet and Timpani are sometimes used in several orchestras. There is a lot of Published scores of mandolin-original and mandolin-orchestrated, which are easy to get.

Kcrt 00:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Photo
Can we get a better photo? I'm sorry, but the one featured here is awful.

--also, the photo labeled Example of an A4-style mandolin (oval hole) is missing. Does it point to a non-existent hyperlink?
 * Second the request. I'm not sure a left-handed A-style mando is the best representative of the genre.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 00:23, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

History of the mandolin in the US
Can anyone say when the Figaro Spanish Students had their tour in the US? It would also be interesting if someone could pipe up with the history of the mandolin orchestras -- while I've heard that numerous such groups existed, I know nothing about them. --- Eirikr 09:01, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

According to Paul Sparks in the Classical Mandolin, they debuted on January 2, 1880 in New York City.

Jim

I did some research and found the original NY Times articles, which say that they arrived in New York on January 2, 1880, but then they went to Boston for awhile. If I remember correctly, they returned to NY to play at Booth's Theatre, starting February 3, in the Humpty Dumpty variety show. I'm working on Carlo(s) Curti's biography now... Dickson.jean 22:00, 3 December 2007 (UTC) Jean

Needs Non-US material
This article is too US-Centric right now. It needs information on mandolin music from Europe and Latin America (esp Brazil and choro). I'll take a stab at moving the US material to a separate section and adding some information on Brazil. Hopefully someone who knows better can edit it if i mess up the format. --- glauber 10Aug05 19:37 UTC

Here's a good article on the history of the mandolin: http://mandolincafe.com/archives/briefhistory.html --- glauber 19:23, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, needs a section on how it was played in its country of origin, Italy. Also spread to the Venetian sphere of influence (all the way down both coasts and islands of the Adriatic and Ionian Seas). In other words, parts of Slovenia, Croatia, Albania, Greece. Use in serenades and cantatas. Yes Mandolin is a staple of traditional music on Croatian coast. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.252.233.166 (talk) 09:37, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

The mandolin as used in Central Asia. I saw a concert of music from Turkmenistan in Chicago. Lo and behold, a mandolin and accordeon duet. As mandolin spread around the world, replaced indigenous instruments? All this could be included.

I added a very brief comment on modern bluegrass mandolin in central Europe. Someone who knows this better than me should expand it! User:blauwkoe

I would question if the banner is still needed. The article is multifaceted and no longer US centric. User:amram99

Could someone please add content regarding Simon Mayor and other non-rock/pop UK musicians? There certainly are many talented folks to add. Glyphs (talk) 17:11, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I have a couple of albums from North Africa that feature mandolins or mandolin-like instruments with extra frets for notes from the maqam system that western music does not use. Anyone know more about this subject? Hraesvelgr (talk) 20:30, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * No, but I'd like to learn more... Wikipedia's articles on maqam don't talk about the instruments used... Dlabtot (talk) 23:44, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Sustained notes
"Like the guitar, the mandolin is a poorly sustaining instrument. A note cannot be maintained for an arbitrary time as with a violin. Its higher pitch makes this problem more severe than with the guitar, and as a result, use of tremolo (rapid picking on a single note) is sometimes used to emulate a sustained note."

This is paricularly on acoustic versions, right? On electrcic Mandolins (I beleive they do exist and perhaps sould there fore be added to the article), this tremolo can be replaced by a guitar-style sustain pedal.

You are partly right. I have an electric one and I have used a guitar sustain pedal on this with fairly good effect. But not as good as the guitar, possibly because of the difference in the frequency ranges. As far as I remember, the sustain on the lower strings (which have freqencies matching that of guitar was better than the higher ones (with much higher frequencies than that of guitar) - Wikicheng 04:22, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

I've clarified this a little since the tremolo "creates" a form of sustain rather then emulating a violin. By the way, the sustain of the lower strings on a top quality mandolin is surprisngly good for its size. Ophir 01:05, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

If you have a good look at the photo already in the article, you'll see that the flat mandolin there has a pickup, volume and tone controls. It works very well both acoustically and amplified, and has in practice replaced both the electric mandolin I once used and the acoustic mandolin also pictured. It has also been used very successfully with distortion (the "tube blaster" imput of a 40w Ross combo amplifier) for one particular song that one of my rock trios did. Andrewa 16:48, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Mandoline Food Slicer
Wikipedia redirects Mandoline (type of food slicer) to Mandolin (musical instrument). There really should be an article (at least a stub) about that...

MANDOLIN FOOD SLICER - agree, definitely needs this definition and short description! Usually mandoline [French, from Italian mandolino mandolin] : a kitchen utensil with a blade for slicing and shredding


 * There are instances of the instrument being spelled "mandoline". Perhaps a disambig notice on the top of the page would be more appropriate?  Especially since the food slicer itself is sometimes spelled "mandolin"...  For reference's sake, the food slicer's page is Mandolin (cooking).  Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 19:00, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


 * There is now a proper article entitled Mandoline which is about the cooking tool. I placed a disambig notice at the top of this page pointing to it.  Mandolin is an alternate spelling of mandoline, but the latter is proper.  I will be working on merging the article Mandolin (cooking) with Mandoline and then deleting the former.  Is everything clear?  :)   Aguerriero  ( ţ ) ( ć ) ( ë ) 17:39, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Mandolin Family
Anyone have any pictures of these other mando types? I'd love to see a bass and a piccolo for instance, but I'm very unlikely to find them on my own.

Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 08:14, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, there's a distinction made in the History section between the mandora and the mandola, and the mandolino and the mandolin, but there's no real description as to how these differ. Does anyone have any more details, or even better some pictures, that could illustrate how these are not the same things?

Thanks! Eiríkr Útlendi 07:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

When I tackled this article, most all of it was a copy and paste from a 'mandobanjo' website. It is not laid out very well, tends to ramble and does not stick to the subject of mandolins. Anyhow, to do my part, I replaced a section in the history part. I believe it gives a succinct account of the mandolin's origin. The facts- names, places and years- are footnoted. Afterwards, It became apparent that the beginning of the article had to be re-written since there was really no definition of a mandolin. So I did this (footnoted also). Now as for the question left in the sandbox regarding mandolinos and mandoras, I will leave it to another to rewrite the definitions and histories of those instruments. When that is done, there will be no need to add to the mandolin's definition to try to expain why it is different from these similiar instruments. (basically, however, they are at a different tonal range, among other things). S. D. 12:16, 22 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Stephen! That helps me understand a bit better.  Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi 19:35, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Ireland
"Also, the competitive attitude of many old-time and bluegrass musicians is unwelcome in the cooperative and musically courteous environment of the Irish session; Irish musicians often perceive the bluegrasser as trying to force the session into becoming a bluegrass "jam"."

I don't think the above paragraph is neutral enough. Well-played bluegrass music is typically highly arranged with varied instrumental breaks which rarely drown out the vocal harmonies. I just don't see how these perceptions are useful in the context of the mandolin. It might be more appropriate to delete the whole paragraph than upset the players with stereotyping!

I also feel that the bulk of the bluegrass-related information (some of which is repeated) could be left out and is possibly harder to maintain in this article. The mandolin (in bluegrass music) is undoubtedly a rich subject but this could be trimmed down a lot. Ophir 01:05, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Agree that the paragraph is not neutral - should be removed. As a mandolin player, I have always found bluegrass jams to be pretty cooperative and curteous - a communal affair really (and I am not a very good player) not sure the basis for the comments in the paragraph are all that accurate or objective.

Thanks. Duly noted and removed. Ophir 17:06, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Victorian Stage
I've found an example of the mandolin being used to accompany a song in an otherwise straight play in Broken Hearts (W.S. Gilbert, music by Edward German) but am not sure if this was common. Think it's worth investigation? 88.109.193.255 20:39, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

What's with the Ottomans?
I read that "The mandolin has been long played in the Hellenic Islands, where the Ottoman Empire did not control"

True as this statement may be, what is the relationship between the mandolin and the Ottoman Empire? Did the Ottomans have something against the mandolin? This seems like a non-sequiter to me.

(If retained, the grammmar should be corrected to "... which the Ottoman Empire did not control."

Continental Europe section sorely lacking
The entirety of the European history of the mandolin is the "recent interest" in bluegrass? Italy anyone?--GoHawks4 06:19, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I came here looking to find the names of good Italian mandolin players but there isn't anything about Italy after the invention of the instrument. Andropod (talk) 22:59, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

need reliable sources
I moved these from the article. These are not Reliable sources, they are just webpages that people submitted unsourced information to.

Levon Helm of The Band, "Levon Helm played both drums and mandolin" (-reference-) Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, "Jimmy Page wrote the music on a mandolin he borrowed from John Paul Jones. He had never played the mandolin before." (-reference-)

players....
this article should have a list of some well known mandolin players like Chris Thile, Bill Monroe, Ronnie McCoury, etc. Piratebob13 07:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * A vandal has removed a large chunk of the article I will try to restore that. Also, Category:Mandolinists may already serve that need. -MrFizyx 18:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I've restored what was here. You can readd that names that you suggested (which frankly are more significant to then instrument than the names others have added).  I would rather get rid of the list though and encourage editors to use the category. -MrFizyx 18:38, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Tubular bells
I thought the 'mandolin' on tubular bells was actually a guitar that sounded like a mandolin? 131.111.8.104

Paul Hooper
Several edits have been undertaken by anon poster 211.30.252.154 to incorporate the above player into the article. The initial edits were too subjective and I reverted them. S/he has since tried to reinsert the edits although with toned down hyperboles. So far, I have left the edits under the subheading "Popular musicians who play mandolin" although this is not quite the correct place to have this. Does someone know whether this player is notable and should be included in the entry? If not, please feel free to delete the addition. --Nuttycoconut 03:43, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Tuning
Isn't 440.0 Hz A4 (and not A3)? 24.178.185.123 (talk) 15:50, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Who wrote about mandolins in japan?
The line 'of course japanese tend to make group' especially piqued my interest. Is that something that can be cited, or just a zany generalization? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.100.203.233 (talk) 20:20, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Late Victorian Mandolin and Guitar Band
I have recently posted this photo on Commons, and thought that it might be of interest.

Polytechnic and People's Palace Mandoline and Guitar Band, Crystal Palace 1899

Romit3 (talk) 20:15, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * That looks like a band I would have enjoyed playing in, especially considering the male/female ratio. Dlabtot (talk) 21:33, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

RfC: List of popular musicians who play mandolin
Q:Should the list of popular musicians who play mandolin be retained, deleted, or forked? If retained, what should be the criteria for inclusion?

This list is getting way too long, I propose it either be trimmed dramatically, or forked to its own article,or deleted altogether. If it stays, there should be some criteria for inclusion, e.g. the musician's use of the mandolin should be in some way notable, for instance it is their primary or often-used secondary instrument. And there needs to be a standard of notoriety that is stricter than the one for including someone in WP itself. If the list is going to include every musician who has ever been recorded or observed playing a mandolin, it will be unmanageable. I don't actually think a list of musicians who have played the mandolin really adds anything to the article and my first choice would be to delete it altogether. Dlabtot (talk) 05:30, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, unless you have people that are integral to the instrument (e.g. a player who brought the instrument to a larger audience) then just remove it all. Imagine if they had a similar list at piano. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 06:47, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Exactly - all the truly notable mandolinists are already included in the text of the article. This list is pure cruft. Dlabtot (talk) 07:32, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I won't go so far as Dlabtot in saying the the article has perfectly captured the list of notable mandolinists, but his point remains valid. The list has long been unmanageable, and the inclusion criteria are unspecified.&mdash;Kww(talk) 11:20, 25 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd just like to note that I never said nor implied that the article has perfectly captured the list of notable mandolinists. What I did say is that a list of mandolinists adds nothing to the article. Dlabtot (talk) 16:59, 26 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and forked it to List of Mandolinists. Dlabtot (talk) 16:59, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Notable?
FYI -- there is a deletion discussion regarding a mandolinist at on the basis of WP:BAND notability. I don't yet have a clear view, but some who see this page may have a view and interest in joining in.--Epeefleche (talk) 05:59, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Australia
The section on Australia contains a lot of information, but much of it appears to be original research rather than known facts. It is also written in a style that suggests that it is the result of one person's research. It should be rewritten in a more general tone, deleting or referencing any material that is speculative. I might also suggest condensing a bit. Sisterdetestai (talk) 02:34, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Bands should not be mentioned in this article unless they are some significant to the history of the mandolin.
Millions of bands and musicians have played the mandolin. That is not sufficient for inclusion in this article. Dlabtot (talk) 17:02, 14 December 2009 (UTC)


 * All I did was add a link to the Wikipedia page of a band that had already been included in the article. If the band is going to be mentioned in the article then the link is not out of place. If you want to cut them out of the article entirely then that's a different matter altogether.R. Jackson (talk) 18:07, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, my mistake. The band is certainly not in any way notable in regards to the mandolin, so I will remove them from the article as you suggest, which is what I meant to do in the first place. Dlabtot (talk) 18:40, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

No pictures
There are no pictures of anyone playing a mandolin. This might help some people viewing this article (like me). (68.226.8.230 (talk) 03:04, 10 January 2010 (UTC))

Italy/Naples
I think a section on the use of mandolin in Neapolitan folk music and classical music needs to be added immediately. This article has a strong bluegrass bias, and its pretty sad that there is almost nothing in this article about the traditional styles of the mandolin, which is in my opinion THE instrument of Italy. Some sources are already here, and getting the rest should be extremely easy. I mean, can anyone excuse the fact that there isn't even a subsection about Italy in the world Mandolin music section? This article seems to make it look like the mandolin is an American instrument, which it surly is not. --96.242.28.73 (talk) 23:38, 26 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I strongly agree with this. At the moment the article looks really weird. Cooke (talk) 09:44, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Mandolin < Pandura?
mandolin: 1707, from Fr. mandoline, from It. mandolino, dim. of mandola, a larger kind of mandolin, altered from L.L. pandura "three-stringed lute," from Gk. pandoura, which is of unknown origin. says: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=mandolin&searchmode=none Böri (talk) 15:07, 23 November 2012 (UTC)

Skewed
Ok, reading above comments has made me aware that this article has been accused before of ignoring European tradition. That was apparent to me when I looked at the article; here's what jumped out at me. The first eight pictures in the article are all non-bowlback instruments. The first two pictures are of F-style mandolins. Then there are A-style, carved mandolins, resonator mandolins and mandolin-banjos. To my mind, they ALL say American tradition, even though some of these are also used in Europe. If I were to change anything, I would make one of the top two photos a bowlback mandolin (do we really need two F-5 mandolin illustrations?) I would also ditch one of the A-style mandolins.

I also noticed that there is no Italian music section and no French-music section, and I'm pretty sure the Germans also played the instrument in large numbers. Those are the two things I noticed, pictures and lack of content.Jacqke (talk) 10:35, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I've done a little bit to balance the article between American and European traditions.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:11, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Also skewed
By the way, if you want to see an even more skewed article about mandolins, check out the Italian page, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandolino Jacqke (talk) 10:41, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

[Proposal] resolving the image floods on the Desktop view
Hi, all. I am mainly active on the Wikimedia Commons, especially the identification/classification/referencing of various musical instruments (including commons:Category:Mandolins). Recently, I found the improvement of this article, and I think it is very interesting, because most subsections on article contain visual descriptions using images. ... It is intelligible and attractive, as far as I was viewing a Mobile page. ... However, when I moved to the PC and start to viewe a Desktop page, I found that too rough layout of images are potentially spoiling the readability of article, in a few sections. (Variations, Mandolin family, and History)	It is what I called "image flood" on the title. It seems to be caused by the difference of layout system between Desktop page and the Mobile page (provided by mw:Extension:MobileFrontend).

The issues and causes were analyzed as following:

To resolve these issues, in minimum changes and efforts, I'll propose the following solutions:
 * Solution 1 for &mdash; Insert the   (possibly with an option "left") at the tail of each section, to reset image floating (by floating layout system) at that point.
 * Additionally, extra  tags are needed at tail of several subsections, to resolve several of . [added] --Clusternote (talk) 11:00, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Solution 2 for : &mdash; Move the image captions exceeding several lines to one of: the article body, footnotes, or possibly more appropriate place.
 * Solution 3 for : &mdash; there are two major plans, and each has pros and cons.
 * Plan 3A &mdash; Zigzag image layout (aligned repeatingly: left, right, left, right, ...) instead of current all-right-alined layout, may be effectively satisfy the visibility of Desktop and Mobile, although the layout on Desktop view may become slightly ugly.
 * Plan 3B &mdash; The  template and   tag may be effective for layouting large number of images in compact footprint, although the layout on Mobile view may lose several correspondences between the image and the subsections/paragraphs.
 * Plan 3B' &mdash; Additionally, if above multiple image was surrounded by  tag, the resulting layout quality on Mobile view may be improved.
 * Note: on above proposal, and  are intentionally ignored (because these seem slightly too deep).

I'm expecting any constructive opinions from contributers of this article. --Clusternote (talk) 03:22, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I think you have a point in that the images are so numerous that the creating a good layout becomes difficult. I think the best solution is to reduce the number of images, not to use special image markup, especially not html coding. I think a better idea is to cut down the amount of images so that they can fit comfortably within each section. Then additional images can be put in a gallery at the end of the article or at the end of the section they illustrate. Centering images, I think is a bad idea, since centered images break up the reading flow. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 21:58, 1 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your gently comment, and I'm sorry for my too late response. Fundamentally I don't want to disturb the gradual improvements by many contributors, so I expect farther improvements in the future. --Clusternote (talk) 20:26, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I would be guilty of adding the photos at issue. Whatever you propose will be fine with me. I tried to add photos specific to content for interest value, but since I have been phone editing,  I was unaware of layout issues on large screen.  Feel free to chop, delete, create photo  section, or whatever works. ThanksJacqke (talk) 23:04, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Can captions be made compressed, to expand with a click? Should captions be pared down?Jacqke (talk) 23:10, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I got onto a PC to edit today (usually use my tablet/phone) and made an attempt to bring photos closer to related text by putting photos side by side. I think it looks better on the PC now, though I haven't looked at my phone. It can certainly be tweaked farther. How it looks on the device depends on how wide it is displayed. It looks better when I use a more narrow browser window than when I use a wide browser window. Still open to suggestions for layout changes.Jacqke (talk) 18:23, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Hornbostel–Sachs classification
The classification of the Neapolitan mandolin may well be 321.321; but shouldn't Gibson and other flat-backs be 321.322? Paul Magnussen (talk) 16:13, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, of course.--Phso2 (talk) 19:07, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Headstock
The wikipedia article for Headstock could use some broadening, any volunteers? It is rather narrowly focussed on US electric guitars.Design (talk) 07:26, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

New lead photo
Looking at an earlier comment, I looked for a different photo for the infobox. I didn't want to have to choose between favorites, flatback vs roundback vs various F5 mandolins. I chose something that looked good and wasn't likely to be someone's favorite. Please object if the photo isn't good. If there are enough that care, maybe we can get a decision among those that show up to talk.Jacqke (talk) 14:55, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Rory Gallagher
The late great Rory Gallagher was an exceptional mandolin player in a folk/blues/rock mode. I saw him once and his mandolin playing was incredible, way ahead of some other players in the same vein I've seen. Yet he isn't mentioned in the article. Stub Mandrel (talk) 20:05, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * He has a line in the Ireland section. If you have any good sources about his mandolin contributions, I'm sure more could be put in.Jacqke (talk) 20:27, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

What to do...
I've been waiting for a decent photo of a Gibson F5 mandolin to be available on Wikipedia and I just noticed that it is available. (My thanks to Clusternote for placing it in some articles. It looks great!) This is one of the cherished Lloyd Loar mandolins which Bill Monroe made famous. The question...where in the mandolin article should it go? With the carved top instruments (replacing one of the three images there now?) In the United States section? Main image (I'm tempted, but I don't want to have to choose between classical music roundback and this American carved top. Is there anyone willing to speak up to build a consensus?Jacqke (talk) 03:38, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I caved in. The photo is with the carved top instruments. The advertisement it replaced is in the Orville Gibson article that also got reworked.Jacqke (talk) 23:03, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Article length
I've been waiting, and it happened. The article has been tagged too long. Does anyone have opinions as to how to make this more readable? Should it be shortened? Should sections be made their own articles? Is the article fine as is?Jacqke (talk) 13:07, 2 May 2019 (UTC)

Splitting proposal
and any others...

I propose that sections Mandolin be split into a separate page called History of the mandolin. The content is large enough to make its own page, and currently the overall mandolin article is too large. I will make a summary of this history for the Mandolin article with a link to the new History of the mandolin page.Jacqke (talk) 02:09, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I think that before the overall history should be touched, a quick edit would be splitting off the United States section into Mandolins in the United States.Jacqke (talk) 19:21, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
 * While waiting for others to comment, I created the article Mandolins in the United States, but have yet to remove the content from the main Mandolin article. I like the way the main mandolin article is now and think it would be a mistake to break it up. I noticed the paragraph about long articles WP:HASTE and feel it applies. "As browsers have improved, there is no need for haste in splitting an article when it starts getting large. Sometimes an article simply needs to be big to give the subject adequate coverage." This is exactly the way I feel the article is. It's breadth comes from adequate coverage. It is long, but easy to maneuver through, thanks to the table of contents and all the heasdings and subheadings. Until I get more interested to form a consensus, I'm not splitting it. I'll leave the newly created article as is, too.Jacqke (talk) 14:06, 13 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Keeping the article a reasonable length seems like a good idea to me. Articles that are too long are slow to load, and some readers don't want to wade through them. Yes, browsers are improving, but more and more people are reading Wikipedia on tiny screens, and not everyone lives in an area with fast download speeds. Also, the Syntax Highlighter, which I use constantly, bugs out if the article is too long. The two topics you picked make sense, since the history is easily separated from information about the construction and playing of the instrument itself, and usually when a reader arrives at the article they are looking for one or the other, not both. The history article should maybe have a link to the Mandolin article in the lead section, and have more about mandolins in the 20th century, but that will come.  Since I am not from the United States, I likely would have chosen "Mandolins in North America", so as to include Mexican and Canadian info, but I guess these can be separate articles if anyone makes them.&mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 19:38, 13 May 2019 (UTC)


 * User:Jacqke, Thank you for creating the article History of the mandolin. I support another split; would someone please create a new article Mandolin playing traditions worldwide and remove the relevant text from the current article? Design (talk) 06:02, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Hi User:Design, I had been looking at that and resisting implementing, because I like the multicultural feel that material brought to the article. However, I can't see any other way to reduce the size. It may take a several days--life just got busy. I will create a summary paragraph of the material to leave in the mandolin article.Jacqke (talk) 13:17, 29 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I would leave the history in this article, but I think the section on "Notable literature" could be shortened considerably.
 * Some of the literature currently listed isn't particularly "notable" -- other than to a mandolin player, simply because it happens to have a mandolin in it. For example, while it is interesting that Beethoven composed a few pieces for mandolin, they are rarely heard, and none of them are especially notable among his works.  Likewise, not every Scarlatti sonata nor every Calace prelude qualifies as particularly notable.
 * Really, the list doesn't need more than a half-dozen items -- at most -- in each of maybe four categories: solo, small ensemble (which would include duos, accompanied sonatas, etc.); mandolin with orchestra; mandolin orchestra (indeed, this last one isn't even represented in the current list, long as it is).
 * If there is sufficient interest, I'd suggest creating a separate article on "Mandolin literature", giving a few solid examples here, and then linking to that article for more information.
 * 70.89.176.249 (talk) 21:05, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

New image proposal
Hello u|Oknazevad,

It has been quite some time since thorough article-wide edit has been done on the mandolin article, and I thank you for your recent work. I have a couple concerns, illustrated by the lead image which you replaced.

You are quite right that the carved tops are archetops. But not archtops care carved; they can also be made of pressed wood, like the majority now being made. I think the language needs care in that section. And also the picture choice.

I solicited input and got none when I chose that image. It was choosen to not favors one community of purist mandolinists (European bowlbacks vs. American carved-tops) over another. A long time Adon the article was completely off balance toward American instruments, ignoring the other.

Looking at the balance now, I would concede a nice Gibson F5 image would be appropriate. However, the image you placed there is a montage. It is better done than I could make, however it is blurry with artifacts from joining pieces of separate images.

I'm open to a better image, but think we need to ask again for consensus, because the image that was there is a better image, and represents the Chinese-made archtops that seem to currently dominate instrument production. I am temporarily pitting the old image back on, and an open to a new image. Jacqke (talk) 05:04, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I quickly grabbed the image from commons. The big thing that bothered me with the other image is that the caption is very poorly phrased, with multiple grammatical errors. I went to fix that, and I noticed that the image caption also had a reference in it, and it made me think that, not only is that reference really unneeded at all, but that we don't really need to go into that much detail of the instrument's construction. Even if the image is retained, the caption should be something simple like "an archtop mandolin". Even if an inexpensive instrument uses a laminate it's still an archtop, and we should state that plainly. oknazevad (talk) 05:13, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I am all for simplifying. I agree the caption and uneeded detail and ref can go.  I am ok with better image too.   I will go with your judgement.Jacqke (talk) 05:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

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Bashkir instrument?
Is there any reason why the article is categorized in Category:Bashkir musical instruments? I cannot find any notice of Bashkirs or Bashkir culture in the text. --Mmh (talk) 10:21, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I didn't find anything online with a quick search. For questions of this type, I would also suggest checking Mandolin playing traditions worldwide, which was split off from the main mandolin article. Best wishes, Jacqke (talk) 16:11, 12 May 2023 (UTC)