The Many Strange Uses of a Soprano Guitar | The World's Weirdest Guitars #7

hello everyone and welcome back to the series where i check out the world's weirdest guitars today i'll be demoing reviewing and investigating all the strange uses of this petite little high-pitched soprano squeaker of a six string but before we get into it a quick reminder that today is the last day of the back to school sale going on over my course platform samuraiguitar3.com since everyone at this point is either back to school or they're not i don't really know what i do know is that if you're a guitarist looking to learn music theory from the ground up to more advanced concepts this is for you my courses are professionally animated in a way that makes a tough stuff easy to understand and there are interactive elements like quizzes lists of things to work on and documentation today is the last day you can get both my courses for the normal price of one when you use promo code back to school 20 on the two course bundle you can find that over www.samuraiguitartheory.com i'll also put up links in the description anyways let's get to it today's weird guitar is the gold tone f6 mando guitar 50 mandolin 50 guitar 100 good times this little guy is tuned an octave higher than a normal guitar putting it in the soprano range it would be as if you put a capo on the 12th fret of a typical guitar i've never played anything quite like this so to start things off i figure it's best to dim the lights give her a little whirl and see how she [Music] goes [Music] so [Music] okay here i have my mandotar and i've also pulled out my mandolin for a little compare and contrast between these two similar instruments the mandolin is a smaller bodied instrument with four sets of double strings each set tuned to the same pitch g-d-a-e whereas the mandator slightly bigger and six strings tuned e-a-d-g-b-e an octave higher than a typical guitar putting both these instruments in a similar range the modern mandolin has a long rich history dating back to italy in the 16 1700s there is some debate as to how this instrument evolved into what it is now but it's likely that luthiers were inspired by smaller stringed instruments like the guitar boutente and mandala to come up with a hybrid instrument that we now know as the mandolin and if you really wanted to dive into the roots the mandolin is a descendant of the ancient loot the earliest examples of which come from mesopotamia over 5000 years ago now based on my research the history of the mandotar isn't quite as impressive as far as i can tell they started making an appearance in the world around the year 2012. i'm thinking a guy at goldtone said to someone else hey it would be cool to mix a mandolin with a guitar to which the other guy responded yeah that would be a cool idea let's do it and now they exist it stands out as a fitting guitar for this series to me because while i've seen bass guitars baritone guitars guitar guitars even tenor guitars i have never come across a soprano guitar i don't know exactly why this is i personally really enjoy playing this thing having an instrument in a different range gets you thinking in new ways and offers a bit of a break to the ear on top of that there are many uses one can find with a soprano guitar why don't we discuss them first of all if you double an acoustic guitar part with the mandotar you get something that kind of sounds like a 12 string but not really check it out [Music] another fun thing you can do with this is fake your way through mandolin parts in a bluegrass ensemble which is great because guitar players are a dime a dozen whereas i've only ever known one mandolin player and he wasn't even all that good here's how that would sound [Music] if that's not all that important to you you can use the piezo pickup to plug into a korg miku pedal to see if the extremely high notes glitch it out let me tell you we're just getting started here since it's tuned up in octave you can play famous copy written guitar riffs without having any issues with the youtube copyright id system let me show you [Music] or how about this since the neck is significantly more condensed you can now play chords that you're somewhat small little useless fingers would never be able to stretch to on a normal guitar this guitar would also make a great travel companion but let's be honest nobody's doing a whole lot of that anytime soon however there are still three more fun things that one can do with a soprano guitar one of those things is digitally dropping the pitch down an octave to see if it sounds like a normal six string okay that didn't sound great but using that same pedal i can also put it up an octave to see if that will make my neighbor's dog bark it did not but that's because i don't think my neighbors are home and even if they were they don't have a dog i'm sorry for lying and the last strange usage that i can think of for this thing is to use it to replace the ukulele in one of those annoyingly cute and quirky stock audio songs that appears in some nail polish selling pyramid scheme video that your ex-girlfriend and her mother always share on facebook but yeah if that's your thing check it out [Music] do [Music] and that brings me to the part of the video where i give you my review i really like this guitar for what it is it's a nice break from my normal guitars that offers a very different sound without having to totally reconceptualize the instrument i don't see myself playing it every day but it's great as something you grab now and then goldtone's website has the price listed at 579 dollars and they also offer a cheaper a style body for 129 less i would say that's fair value for a chinese-made guitar that cost you aren't getting a boutique handcrafted work of art but it plays well it feels nice and for a guitar that i casually pick at that's really all i need it also comes with a case that i suspect would fit in the overhead container in an airplane if i ever set foot on an airplane again i would consider bringing this my only small complaint is that if you try to play it on your lap it's pretty cumbersome but i mean i think that's just kind of par for the course for f-style bodies i use a strap and it's all good overall i would say that this brings me joy and maybe one day when sammy g jr is a little bit older he'll be able to use his tiny little fingers to play this before he graduates to a full-size guitar or maybe he'll have no interest in music at all who really knows he's only five months old to wrap up these videos i like to incorporate these weird guitars into a setting that i think best suits them so here is a eagles inspired country rock thing with the goldtone f6 mandolin guitar [Music] ladies and gentlemen there you have it if you happen to come across a guitar that you think would fit in the series please feel free to let me know on twitter instagram wherever i'm always looking for more of the world's weirdest guitars don't forget today is the last day that you can get both my courses for the normal price of one i'm the biggest believer in the power of learning music theory it gives you the tools and freedom to recreate the music you hear in your head without having to spend time guessing which notes might work in my courses i teach the system that i use every time i sit down to play my instrument use promo code back to school 20 on the two course bundle over at samurai guitar theory dot com for your last chance to get that two for one deal thank you all for watching if you want to get caught up in this series hit that link up there if you're new here hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for a wide range of musical content if you enjoyed this video let me know by leaving a comment or hitting that like button until next time i'm samurai guitarist thank you all again and i'll see you soon

Channel: samuraiguitarist

Views: 220,462

Rating: 4.9743633 out of 5

Keywords: mandotar, mando guitar, guitar, mandolin, acoustic, instrument, weird, weird instrument, strange, soprano, gold tone, f6, samurai, samurai guitarist, world's weirdest guitars, review, demo

Id: L1YaVVsz4mA

Length: 10min 15sec (615 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/MyMiddleNameIsMartin]

Did you just skip to 4:43 and wonder why it was taken down? Literally 5 seconds before that he says (obviously joking) that since it's an octave higher than most guitars you can play copyrighted materials without worry of them getting taken down. The section of video wasn't actually copyrighted otherwise the whole video would've been taken down. He did that to further the joke of playing copyrighted material and it "not" getting taken down.