I found a string set "La Bella Guitarrone Metal, GUI" that seems to be tuned like a guitar. Does anyone have experiences with it ?
Well, the traditional tuning of a guitarrón for Mariachi music is ADGCEa, with the "a" on the first string actually a thicker string than the C and E and tuned
lower than the C. You hold the guitarrón almost top facing up (not quite), and you pull
up on the strings with wrist action--i.e., outward from the sound hole to play it. You pull two strings at once in octaves giving it a big sound, which you need because large Mariachis often have multiple trumpets.
The best guitarrón method is still Nati Santiago's, which is available at [Invalid or Expired Link Removed], with a CD of scales and examples of simple songs.
To accomodate the upward pull on the strings without buzzing, the guitarrón has really high action--like 3/8" to 1/2" where the neck joins the body, which is also where the imaginary 7th fret would be. That's all you get--7 imaginary frets--because the fingerboard does not extend over the body at all. The downward distortion of the variously-sized strings because of the high action results in a strange thing that seems to defy the laws of physics: The imaginary frets are not always perpendicular to the length of the neck. and they are not even always straight lines from string to string. You get zig-zaggy imaginary frets that kind of fan out along the neck.
This bothered me horribly when I first got it. One night after hearing a great Mariachi performance at Garibaldi's in Guadalupe, California, I tried to ask the non-English-speaking guitarrónist about this, but he didn't get the problem. It didn't dawn on me until I was driving home that he simply
didn't care that the C on the imaginary third fret on the low A string did not line up across the neck with the F on the imaginary third fret of the D string. He knew where to press his fingers down to get whatever note he needed; what did he care if each string had it's own imaginary frets?
You learn twelve notes using twelve finger positions, and that's pretty much it. Actually, though, I guess guitarrón geniuses like Santiago could do more with it, alternative fingerings and such, but most Mariachi guitarrónists I see just seem to be playing the same twelve notes with the same twelve finger positions. Some don't use two strings for G#, which is a real bastard to play. (They all seem to know the same often-used ending, though. It's kind of a Mexican-music version of the A-Train ending, with a two-note stinger.)
When I first got my guitarrón, I could only "play" it for 3-4 minutes at a time because the action was so painfully high. How can you get good playing 3-4 minutes a few times a day? I was reduced to putting one of those old-fashioned rubber page-turner fingers on each finger of my left hand to try to play longer. Eventually, I learned that you need to use the flats of the fingers, sometimes two at a time, to play the notes, not the fingertips. (See the photo of Nati's left hand at the website, above.) But it still was painful.
I obviated this problem entirely by having my guitarrón greatly modified to play blues and jazz, which is what I'd rather play anyway. (I've described the modifications elsewhere in these threads.) So I couldn't play Mariachi guitarrón music on it anymore, even if I wanted to.
J.E.deFevrero, 1970
drool
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