Gypsy Picking...impossible

dennis · July 2014

Charles Meadows wrote: »

Hey Dennis,

Could you explain what you mean with DUDU and DUDD played as triplets? I know la manouche very well.

i meant the passage at 1:46, in the studio version he does it more often… 6 notes played as a triplets : D U D U D U

So he's basically purposely accenting beats 1 and 3…

Anyway , I checked out the Bickford Mandolin Method (published in 1920) that Michael mentioned ( I live right next to one of Canada's biggest music libraries), and indeed it seems to suggest that players use a technique similar to Gypsy Picking. Michael mentions that the author doesn't talk about rest strokes, but he does!!

"In making the stroke, the hand is dropped suddenly from the position as shown in the cut, so that the pick strikes the pair of strings and rests firmly against the next higher string"

The book even has triplet etudes to practice DUD DUD DUD !!

I also found a book called Cristofaro's Mandolin . Couldn't find the publishing date, but the author lived in the 19th century. In it, he talks about picking patterns, and he shows example where each new string starts with a downstroke, he even goes as far as to make sure that downstrokes end up on downbeats!

In another book titled The Early Mandolin by James Tyler and Paul Sparks, they talk about early mandolin pedagogy.

They mention various schools of thought for picking technique, one of them from a fellow named Leoné (1768):

"the first I call superior [downstroke] because it is the richest and the most used… the second I call inferior [upstroke]… this one is less sweet… and should not be employed except where speed demands it; it must above all be avoided in passing from a lower to a higher string because this creates the greatest difficult."

The authors then go on to write:

"Denis [not me but some other ancient mandolin master named Pietro Denis from the 18th century] attempts to simplify the rules for up and down strokes to the most basic few. Strong beats are usually played with a down stroke and one works out sequences in order to ensure this."

Later on they write:

"The problem of stroking groups of three notes is discussed by all authors […]. If alternate up and down strokes are used, the inferior stroke will fall on the downbeat every other time, but any other system will involve at least two consecutive strokes in the same direction."

And then they talk about context and compromise of technique… There we go folks. Classical mandolin technique is Gypsy Picking!!!! And I suspect this technique comes from Oud. I will have to research this in the future to see what kind of information I come up with.

Unfortunately, I could not find the guitar method book I mentioned in a previous post, where the author describes starting each string with a downstroke… I 'll keep looking for it.

The question now is , when did mandolinist switch to a modern flat wrist approach??? in the mandolin videos i posted before, they didn't seem to use classical mandolin technique
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dave apollon seems to use it but it's hard to tell because of the poor video quality and the excessive use of tremolo:

I also found a book The guitar and mandolin : biographies of celebrated players and composers for these instruments (1914) by Philip James Bone. The following passage is of interest:

"The precursor of the guitar in England was the cither, an instrument not so large as the guitar, […] strung with wire and played with a plectrum after the manner of the mandolin."

MichaelHorowitz · July 2014

@dennis I did say the Bickford explicitly mentions the rest-stroke. What I was saying is that the guitar books, like Van Eps, are more vague.

Thanks for looking into those other historical sources! I actually have the Crhristofaro and all the Bickford methods here: http://www.djangobooks.com/Category/mandolin_ebooks

As well as some related tenor banjo methods: http://www.djangobooks.com/Category/banjo_ebooks

Shemi · July 2014

[quote="

As well as some related tenor banjo methods: http://www.djangobooks.com/Category/banjo_ebooks[/quote]

Great... This means that one day I can take my gypsy technique and apply it to tenor banjo/guitar!

I'd never played one before but someone brought a tenor guitar for me to set up. As soon as I realised that it was tuned like a cello, and being a cellist as well as guitarist, I was able to find all the notes and knock out some Bach. I know so little about them having only in the past encountered tenor banjo in Irish sessions, but never knew how they were tuned.

Do you know if the picking technique is similar in trad Irish playing to the gypsy picking style?

Jazzaferri · July 2014

@Denis ....you are definitely an academic at heart. Great insightful history, I think you will find that Oud is likely the same....a guess on my part...but downstrokes for emphasized notes just makes so much