Brazilian Mandolin

Book excerpt: The mandolin was brought to Brazil by Portuguese colonists in the 15th and 16th centuries, and eventually worked its way into traditional Brazilian music. the principal aim of this book is to present an overview of the several faces of the mandolin in Brazil. In this book's eighteen progressively arranged character studies, the mandolin student will find, besides a great number of aspects of the idiomatic technique of the instrument (i.e., changes of fingering positions, double stops, tremolos, arpeggios, legatos, chords, etc.), no less than fourteen different styles. All of the pieces are presented first in notation only as mandolin/guitar duets, followed by the mandolin part repeated with tablature.