Contextual Associations
The North American tiple is a box-lute chordophone of the U.S.A. A hybrid form of guitar, it was designed in the early 20th century by bringing together physical features of diminutive Latin American guitars and the tuning pattern of the Hawaiian ukulele, an instrument that at the time was wildly popular in the U.S.A. The tiple was manufactured and sold commercially from around 1920 into the 1970s, and found its way into a few vernacular and commercial music traditions. Because of the way it is strung (with four double- and triple-course strings three of which are mixed-octave), it is particularly useful as an accompaniment/chording instrument because of its rich, full sound. In the hands of some performers, it could also be played as a lead/solo instrument.
Description
The body of the tiple looks like that of the classical guitar but is only about three-quarters its size (a classical guitar is about 38 inches long, the tiple approximately 28 inches). The figure-8 shaped resonator is constructed from thinly-shaven boards of wood—possibly mahogany for the sides (detail #1) and back (detail #2), and spruce for the soundboard. On the interior sides of the backboard and soundboard a number of wooden struts are glued before they are themselves glued to the sides of the resonator. These strengthen the boards structurally and enhance their resonance. The flat soundboard has a circular soundhole cut in it near the center of its top half, and a wooden tension bridge (detail #3) is glued to the soundboard below the soundhole. The neck and peg block are fabricated from a single block of wood, possibly cedar. The heel of the neck is securely joined to the side of the resonator at its top end, most likely with a dovetail joint to a block inside the resonator. A decorative purfling of multi-colored wood is glued to the edges of the soundhole and the soundboard. The flat topside of the neck is laminated with a flat fingerboard of mahogany wood that has eighteen metal frets (as opposed to nineteen on a classical guitar) inserted into grooves cut across it and three inlaid mother-of-pearl dots. The fingerboard overlaps the soundboard at the twelfth fret and continues up to the edge of the soundhole. The top end of the fingerboard terminates at a nut (a raised ridge) made of wood. The pegblock (detail #4) is slotted and has two sets of five lateral-mounted metal machine heads with back-facing knobs. Ten steel strings (three of which are wound) in four courses, the outer ones double, the middle two triple, run through holes in the bottom of the bridge (catch sticks anchor this end of the strings, see detail #3) and over a metal saddle, then over and slightly above the soundboard and the fretted fingerboard before passing over the nut and being wound around the tuning pegs. The first three courses are mixed octave, the fourth (highest-pitched) is tuned to unison. The strings all have the same vibrating length of 16.9 inches (as opposed to 25.6 inches for the classical guitar) as measured from the bridge saddle to the nut.
Player - Instrument Interface and Sound Production
The tiple can be played either by a seated or standing performer and held horizontally or with its pegbox end raised slightly, the soundboard facing outwards. The player can either pluck the strings with finger picks on the thumb and index finger of the right hand (video #1) or strum or pluck the strings with the aid of a flat pick (video #2). For both techniques the strings are stopped against the fretted fingerboard with the fingertips of the left hand. The standard tuning for the tiple is: A3 A4 - D4 D3 D4 - F#4 F#3 F#4 - B4 B4, which, by ignoring the lower octave strings of the first three courses, is in essence the standard ukulele tuning G4 - C4 - E4 - A4 up a whole step. The basic range of the tiple (ignoring the lower octave strings in the first three courses) is about two-and-one-half octaves, from D4 – G6, and the instrument is fully chromatic over this span. Due to its metal strings and multi-string courses, the tiple has a moderately loud volume and full sound.
Origins/History/Evolution
Instruments called tiple (which means “treble” or “soprano” in Spanish) have existed for centuries in Europe (especially on the Iberian peninsula) and Latin American. These instruments vary from one another greatly in the design of their string carriers, the number and configurations of strings, and the genres of music into which they are integrated. The creation of the North American tiple is credited by various sources to one of three instrument companies--Lyon and Healy, Gibson, and Martin—that based the instrument on a Latin American tiple given a new tuning, that of the ukulele. The Latin American countries from which the prototypical tiple originated in these stories include Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, and Cuba. The most likely suspect, in my opinion, is the Colombian/Venezuelan tiple, which is a 12-string guitar with four triple-course strings some of which have mixed octaves (Gradante 1998, pp. 381-382). At any rate, whichever company first produced and marketed this instrument starting in the late 1910s intended to capitalize on the then wildly popular Hawaiian ukulele craze. The Martin Guitar Company is known to have started production of two tiple models in 1919 and continued producing them into the early 1970s (Schmude n.d., 1924 catalog pp. 45-46 and 1972/1974 catalog pp. 24-25). The production histories of the other companies making tiples appear to be shorter lived. The two videos to which links are provided both feature Martin tiples.
Bibliographic Citations
Beloff, Jim. 1997. The Ukulele: A Visual History. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books.
Gradante, William J. 1998. "Colombia." In The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music v.2. ed. Dale A. Olsen and Daniel E. Sheehy. New York: Garland Publishing, pp. 376-399.
Gruhn, George, and Walter Carter. 1993. Acoustic Guitars and Other Fretted Instruments. San Francisco: GPI Books.
Reily, Suzel Ana. 1998. "Brazil: Central and Southern Areas." In The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music v.2. ed. Dale A. Olsen and Daniel E. Sheehy. New York: Garland Publishing, pp. 300-322.
Schechter, John M. 2014. “Tiple.” MGDMI v.5: 23.
Schmude, Doug (?). Website “Martin Guitar Catalogs: The Unofficial Archive,” accessed March 6, 2021: http://personal.dougschmude.net/catalog/index.html
Uncle Emile. Blog “The Martin Tiple,” accessed March 6, 2021: http://martintiple.blogspot.com/
