It SEEMS like mandolin would be the result of an illicit union between a guitar and a fiddle...
"It SEEMS like mandolin would be the result of an illicit union between a guitar and a fiddle..."
Isn't that how orcs were created, too? :) Okay, I'm looking up what my enecylopedia says on "mandolin" now, and it says, "It was probably copied from the lute", and also the 4-stringed mandolin is "tuned in fifths, like the violin". Now a fiddle is basically a type of violin, right?--wonder if that would fit with the guitar/fiddle union theory.
More from the violin article:
"Musicians have used many kinds of stringed instruments. . .for thousands of years. But no one knows when players began to use bows, instead of just plucking the strings. Chinese players used bowed instruments in the AD 900s. A hundred years later, musicians used forms of bowed instruments in many countries in Asia, Europe, and northern Africa. In the 1400s players started using bows to play instruments of the guitar family. These bowed guitars developed into the instruments called viols. The first violins date from the 1500's. They were developed from the early bowed instruments, rather than from the viols. For many years, viols and violins developed side by side, each influencing the other. But by the late 1600s, most musicians favored the violin family, and the viols dropped out of use."
"It SEEMS like mandolin would be the result of an illicit union between a guitar and a fiddle..."
ROFL!!