For anyone still surviving my attempts to play instruments which have relevance to
anything at all, lend an ear to this one - the Greek baglama. It is best described as a
soup ladle which accidentally got strings. It sounds like a soprano machine-gun and is
tuned dd'-a'a'-d'd'. You can play it like a mandolin, bouzouki, or itself.
http://artists.mp3s.com/artist_song/1431/1431722.html
This is a little sort of primitive piece I've called 'Out of the Bag' and played on the
baglama with a tabor-style drum beat accompaniment.
You can get these little things from proper music shops in Greece for around $60 to
this
quality - hand-carved one piece mulberry wood for the body, neack and headtock, spruce
top, rosewood and bone bridge, fingerboard looks like oak. Cheap tourist ones ($30) are
not playable; action and intonation are quite critical, and I tried a dozen different
types before picking this one as least devastating to the ear drums. This instrument
does
actually cause pressure-wave pain to the player's ears but is safe from around six
feet in
a normal environment. It is extremely painful to animals and I don't play it near my
dogs.
It's great for dispersing excess Shetland fiddlers!
David
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