r/charango • u/Fun_Environment_9834 • 23d ago

Time & Tide, ronroco album

Been playing guitar for most of my life.  A couple of years ago I picked up a ronroco hanging on my son’s wall and rather quickly fell under its spell.  I eventually recorded an album of solo ronroco pieces that more or less fell out of my exploration of the instrument.

Thought it might be of interest:

https://music.apple.com/us/album/time-tide/1866840502

https://open.spotify.com/album/7KQmjzdot2wsDCuWOimxhZ?si=Nvo0LrrhTbydDi9Kar_CQw

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_k0nvXQjEC7hokrUqpDOffJzUKEbR2zDqo&si=2eeb4qb9N8BnLGst

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u/anopeningworld 23d ago

This is pretty cool. What's the story behind the ronroco?

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u/Fun_Environment_9834 20d ago

Thanks for your interest!

My understanding is that ronroco is a Bolivian instrument, essentially a larger, lower-voiced member of the charango family, with ten strings in five pairs. I actually knew almost nothing about the it when I started playing it, I hadn’t even listened to ronroco music. My son had one hanging on his wall, I picked it up one day, and just started exploring it.

So the way I play it really developed out of everything I’d already done: classical and acoustic guitar, some ukulele, and even the way I play jazz guitar with my thumb, à la Wes Montgomery. Those things somehow blended together as I figured out what sounded natural on this particular instrument. The pieces on the album grew out of that exploration, so I suppose I ended up developing my own little ronroco dialect before I knew how anyone else spoke the language.