>> You don't [get ringing-string effects] in Turkish playing
>> on either kind of "keman" (a word used for both Western fiddles and for
>> an instrument from Central Asia resembling the Chinese er-hu), as they
>> are played in as vocal a manner as possible.
Brainfart. "Keman" means a Western fiddle or a thing like a vielle/rebec.
The Central Asian doodad is a "rebab". All three are played in similar
vocal-melodic style.
>> You get a LOT of it in Black Sea fiddling [...] the least vocal music
>> imaginable, with the highest metronome speeds ever found in the field
>> anywhere, accelerating up to 900bpm in one of Picken's transcriptions.
> Help! Throw all those books from 300 years ago with 72-80 bpm as the
> natural state of human musical speed out of the window. What do they
> drink to go with this?
The local mind-bender is "deli bal" ("mad honey"), a psychedelic honey
derived from the flowers of _Rhododendron ponticum_, the Pontic azalea,
which also happens to be the commonest kind of rhododendron in Scotland.
The flowers are supposed to have the desired effect even without being
run through a bee. I have no personal experience of what that effect is.
Apparently there is a description in Xenophon's _Anabasis_ but I haven't
found it. The dances that go with this kind of fiddling are the usual
Middle Eastern line or circle type, though you can't do much but pogo up
and down or wobble enthusiastically during these ultra-fast breaks. Think
of a fusion of Morris dancing and hard house.
>> if we are to believe the illustrations in Playford's books from the
>> 1650s, the kind of fiddle [English folk fiddlers] used was the kit.
> I always wonder whether instruments have changed, or artists just
> couldn't draw them.
No artist could confuse a kit with a normal-shaped fiddle. The soundbox
is only half as wide.
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