While looking at fiddles/violins recently, I kept coming across a variety of instruments that resemble the guitar, e.g., Irish buzouki, mandolin, cittern, etc. Is there anyplace where I can get one concise explanation/comparison to guitar and among the various instruments?
Fear not; I have my first flute on the way and hope to be lost in that for some time to come. But, I really am curious and am not educated enough in this area to at first glance appreciate the differences. Some seem so complicated with double strings that can be arranged in different ways, different tuning to chords, etc.
When you get into the names of longer double strung instrument, confusion reigns. Here are a few rough and ready rules-not to be taken as gospel truth. Bouzoukis are generally “long scale”-that is the distance between the bridge and the nut is around 24-25". An octave mandolin has a shorter scale-21" to 23 1/2". Both have eight strings and may be tuned in a variety of ways, GDAD (from botton to top) being quite popular with Iroids. An octave mandolin is probably more likely to be in standard violin/mandolin tuning GDAE. A cittern usually has about the same scale length as an octave mandolin but has 10 strings. Many tunings are used. What about a long scale instrument with 10 strings? Some people call it a bouzouki, some a cittern. I guess it just depends on which word you like. Sometimes people call iinstruments citterns when other people would call them octave mandolins. Robin Bullock calls his 8-stringer an octave mandolin. If you wanted to buy one you need to think of scale length, 8 vs 10 (or even 12) strings. Body size, whether large, medium or small. Bouzoukis are very popular for accompaniment in Irish and other trad musics. Octave mandolins can be used for both accompaniment and melody playing. You can play melody on a bouzouki too. It’s just harder becasue of longer reaches.
A friend had a Greek bouzouki (bowl back) in for repair at his guitar shop that had three pairs of strings, tuned something like DAD. I could play dulcimer tunes on the high d, using the other two strings as drones.
This one was used in a band that played at a Greek restaurant, and had an electric-acoustic pickup installed.
It’s a good thing that the ukelele, tiple, guitarron, quatro, and tres haven’t been adopted into Irish music, or things could get confusing.
Alec Finn has always used those for accompaniment. Tuned DAD too. I think the first zouks used in Irish music were Greek instruments. But it wasn’t too long before luthiers started making good 4-course instruments.
To see Ale Moller’s incredible bass-drone mandola go to the following site and click on the Swedish flag. Then scroll down to Frifot and listen to the tunes. Try the set that begins with the word agram. The instrument is fretted for some quarter tones or something and was made by Adin and Ekvall. It’s also a lot bigger than an ordinary mandola.
Thanks for the pointer to the ‘Irish bouzouki’ site, Steve. The detail on the Moynihan/Irvine/Lunny connection is the first blow-by-blow account of who contributed what to the process, though no doubt someone else will have a different version of events!
I’d love to know where Finn got that instrument. The layout and tuning is more typical of an instrument you might have found in Greece in the 30s, not the 60s, and even then the player would probably have varied the tuning from tune to tune. By the '60s, 4 course bouzoukis (often fully electric) were common, tuned the same way as the top four strings of a standardly tuned twelve string guitar but dropped down a tone.
I’ve heard it said that the Irish bouzouki is better thought of as a member of the mandolin family than as a close relative of the Greek 'zouk and I think that is right. Graham McDonald, the luthier who built my best 'zouk, thinks that it is the tuning in fifths that gives the Irish 'zouk its very un-Greek sound, a view which would confirm the view that it is best thought of as a kind of large mandolin. I’m not entirely convinced, though. I have a solidbody electric 'zouk, wired like a stratocaster but tuned the Irish way. I can make it sound like an Irish 'zouk, a Greek 'zouk or a twelve string guitar, despite the tuning in fifths. I can also make sounds on it you’d probably rather not know about.
I’ve heard that he gets bouzoukis from Greece but I don’t know any more than that. Here’s what he said about his first one:
"I got a present of a bouzouki from Greece (by mistake it was,
actually - I asked a friend of mine to bring back one of
those “lautels” back from Crete. It’s a type of Grecian lute,
a crude form of the European lute - beautiful thing,
bigger. "
This gives me a clue, but only a bit of a clue. The Greek bouzouki seems to be one of a family of Turkish lutes brought to mainland Greece by the Greek speakers expelled from western Turkey and the islands off it’s coast in the early years of the 20th century. These were the people who developed rembetika in the 20s and 30s. Rembetika is not a Greek folk music of longstanding and was common only in those places the displced populations settled—Piraeus and parts of Northern Greece, Thesaloniki from memory. My guess is that other lute type instruments of Turkish origin would be found in other parts of Greece dating back to the very long period of Ottoman occupation.
I think I’m right in saying that Crete was not a place where rembetika thrived so it is unlikely that the bouzouki as such had a role in traditional Cretan music. OTOH, Crete is a place where people of Turkish ancestry still keep up Turkish customs, dressing in the style of Turkish peasants to this day. My guess is that there would have been Turkish lutes around in Crete for centuries taht are related to bouzoukis of the old kind.
Sources I’ve encountered suggest that the Greek bouzouki evolved directly out of the Turkish saz, and that the Greek name came from the Turkish “bozuk” (diaresis, if any, omitted), which means “broken”. Such sources indicate a confusion about this, but if one considers that rembetika music and the bouzouki go historically hand in hand, and that rembetika was reportedly the music associated with a hashish-smoking underground culture in Greek portside communities around the 1920’s, “broken” isn’t so much of a stretch, I think; consider the popular terms we use for cannabis intoxication. Of course, I could be way off base with my theory, but it makes sense to me, even if I’ve made a hash of it.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
