Cabral Estudos Part 2: Masaniello, Galope (Machete Tabs)

Following on from yesterday’s post about the Cabral manuscript, two more C19th pieces for, the uke’s forerunner, the machete.

I say ‘forerunner’ but reading Manuel Morais‘s Colecção de Peças para Machete, the rajão seems like the much more likely candidate. The soprano uke is more like a machete in size and number of strings, but not at all like it in terms of tuning. And I’d say the uke’s re-entrant tuning was its defining characteristic. In that, it’s much more like the 5-string, tenor-ukulele sized rajão which is tuned dgCEA (with re-entrant d- and g-strings).

The difference in tuning between the machete and the uke does cause a few problems. Unlike yesterday’s tunes, today’s don’t transfer directly to a re-entrant uke as pleasingly. They would, however, work well on a low-G uke (with the A-string tuned down to G) or on a baritone (with the E-string tuned down to D). I might well re-arrange them for standard uke sometime.

Again these tabs (worked out from the original manuscript which is public domain) and MP3s are released under a Creative Commons license meaning you can freely play them, record them, adapt them, pass them round or even sell them. I had assumed everyone was familiar with Creative Commons but a comment from plink freud set me straight. I’m more than happy to write a post about my take on Creative Commons – and I might well do that – but you can read the official version here and watch this video.

Masaniello

Masaniello (Tab)

There’s a bit of an anomaly in the original score for this one. Bar 15 is clearly only has enough notes in it for a bar of 3/4. But there’s no indication of a time signature change and you’d expect it to be (indeed it’s very similar to) a repeat of bar 3. I’ve retained it as written in the tab above but here’s a tab with bar 15 repeating bar 3.

Here’s the tab being played by a robot:


Masaniello (MP3)

The second section doesn’t work too well on a re-entrant uke, so here’s a shortened version for uke tuned gCEG

Masaniello – Shortened Version (Tab)

And here that is being played by a human:


Masaniello – Uke Version (MP3)

Galope

Galope (Tab)

I’m going to have to work up a uke-suitable version of this one because I love this tune. Until then, here’s the robot version:


Galope (MP3)

Creative Commons License
These pieces with arrangements by Manuel Joaquim Monteiro Cabral; and tab and audio by http://ukulelehunt.com are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

View Comments

6 Comments

  1. George Stone April 15th, 2011 8:35 am

    hahaha nice uke-robot!
    And again, you got good point on that Al, good work, is a so interesting post and I hope you have more about that I’ll be glad to keep looking forward.

    Your friend, George

  2. drywell April 16th, 2011 1:56 pm

    Al, these are all fantastic – you’ve inspired me. I’ve quit my job and bought a small fishing boat. I’ll eat nothing but salted cod washed down with Vinho Verde. People have been looking at me funny here on the shores of Lake Erie, but they’ll come around.

    Seriously, good stuff.

  3. Micca Wootten April 16th, 2011 7:01 pm

    Wish we could have this with the notes instead of tabs. Is anyone up to the challenge?

  4. Woodshed April 21st, 2011 11:40 am

    George: Thanks very much.

    drywell: Thanks. Have fun with it.

    Micca: There’s standard notation as well as tab in the files. What’s your problem?

  5. Claude July 24th, 2011 3:17 am

    What a wonderful find.
    It appears to be tuned an octave above a plectrum banjo, so it should be playable on any standard banjo as well.

  6. Woodshed July 24th, 2011 8:08 am

    Claude: Thanks!

Sorry, Comments Are Broken Right Now

You must be logged in to post a comment.