Chiff and Fipple Forums

I haven't played in any real sessions, but I've played in Bluegrass jams with several banjos, several mandolins, and a fiddle or two, and I can be heard pretty well, because I have a Bourgeois Country Boy (mahogany back and sides, adirondack top). I use a .80 mm Clayton pick, beveled and polished, w...

I use standard tuning. Most of the Irish stuff I play is either D major or E dorian, so I capo on the second fret and play as in C major or D dorian. And, of course, B minor and A mixolydian also work capoed on 2, played as in A minor and G mixolydian. Since I play mostly Bluegrass, I'm not interest...

Yes, the stress question is paramount; whether the syllable is stressed or unstressed can completely change the sound of the vowel. I say, in normal, fast, native-speaker speech: man-duh-LINN The "duh" in my pronunciation is a bit different, though. As often happens in fast speech with an...

Well, we know that there are no whistles available in the Philippines: http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=21820&highlight=philippines+send+whistle http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=15904&highlight=philippines+send+whistle I have a special email user name that is used only for ...

emmline wrote:what's it called...melon-backed--mandolin

I believe that the official high-class technical term is 'tater bug.

Congratulations wrote:I'm also interested in where people put the stress. I pronounce it MAN-duh-linn, but I've heard some people pronounce it man-duh-LIN.

man-duh-LIN for me.

Wombat wrote:Or secondhand pants with holes in the knees.

Trust me Womb (may I call you Womb?), you're livin' in the past with this one. My granddaughter buys new ones with holes in the knees.

"In the air," for sure. I've got very fond memories of the bookstores of those times--"Howl" next to a shelf of New Directions books next to Jung and R.D. Laing next to "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones." Ah, and Paul Reps' Zen Telegrams , the publication of which can probably be ...

But Snyder wasn't entirely comfortable cast in the role hippie father-figure. In an interview, he seemed to see the Beats as tougher-minded, and his own practices (religious and ecological) as more surely grounded in traditional knowledge. It might be worth noting that "hippie" began life...

Kerouac and Snyder, in particular, were very influential in making Zen Buddhism attractive to those who read their stuff--especially Kerouac's Dharma Bums . That's what led many of us to Alan Watts, and on to D.T. Suzuki--and beyond. In a way, this progression was a bit like the way the Kingston Tri...

Having gone through 19 cats, nothing in the first post was new to me. The best thing I ever found was a so-called "sake bag" that we picked up in Japan, designed to hold a couple of large bottles of sake. It was a heavy canvas bag, large enough to hold a cat, with a heavy drawstring. We'd ...

brewerpaul wrote:I made a pen on the lathe last night for my wife.

Hey, Paul. Have you thought of offering matching whistle and pen sets?

I've only ever owned one 12-string (a small-bodied Gibson, which I sold in 1979), but I do recall that getting everything in exact tune--including fretted notes matching open strings--was quite difficult. It's actually impossible with the octave strings, no matter what the scale. To be in tune up t...

Someone emailed this with title " Panic in Ireland over Flooding". http://www.raccoonbend.com/irishflood.jpg Someone else sent this joke in response to a thread on identity and recognition: Two guys are engaged in spirited conversation in a Dublin pub. "Where are you from"?, says...

I haven't, but I'd think that if your lower octave courses are tuned in octaves it might get a bit jingle-jangley, what with several of the higher notes being duplicated. I've only ever owned one 12-string (a small-bodied Gibson, which I sold in 1979), but I do recall that getting everything in exac...