Album Notes

Mandolin Tunes is a collection of 23 tunes originally presented on my So Many Tunes blog from 2007-2011. All tunes were recorded by myself at home, mostly using a Zoom H4 digital recorder. The focus of these recordings is meant to be on the tunes themselves and not the performances, so most tunes feature the melody being played two or three times through in a straightforward manner. A few tracks include harmony parts. Standard notation sheet music for all of the tunes is available on the Some Many Tunes blog.

While I've been fortunate for the last decade to have dozens of my tunes played regularly by my good friends in Contratopia most of these pieces don't quite work as contra dance tunes. They are a little too slow, they have too many sections, or they are a little too classical sounding. Similarly, I have been lucky to have many wonderful mandolin orchestras around the world play and record a number of my compositions over the last 25 years. Some of these tunes may one day be used as the basis for future mandolin orchestra pieces but, at this point, I am content to share them in this format.

I used several different mandolins including a couple of old Gibson oval hole A models and a beautiful Pomeroy A2 Gibson replica. I used an inexpensive Martin OM and a Taylor dreadnought to play the guitar parts. Playing this CD at loud volume will highlight its humble technical pedigree and may reveal the occasional noise from our neighborhood. Finally, no reverb or other sound processing has been added to the tracks, although I did use a fade out tool on most.