Monday - January 24, 2011
Learning New Things Each Day
I ran across this thing while thinking about the song from the previous post, and looking up a few songs that I thought had bits in common. I found this instrument in a Scottish rendition of one of those songs. Now, I have heard the name of this thing a few times in my life. Is it also sometimes used as a synonym? But what I did not know was that this device has been around since the early Middle Ages and is still made today.
It’s a cross between a violin, a guitar, and the bagpipes, driven by a crankshaft, with keys to play chords like an autoharp. And then mated to a half coil of rusty barbed wire. So “mechanical droning nasty violinitar” describes it, but that’s not it’s real name. You have heard this instrument before, and probably not realized it. It’s still popular in the near east, and thus part of the musical themes that we recognize as Greek, Gypsy, and maybe Arabic as well.
When I found out what this was, my first reaction was “But aren’t they bigger?” which was a correct one; sometimes these devices are nearly as big as an upright piano. A bit more searching and listening showed me another odd thing: the 60s song written about a guy who plays one of these things does not contain a single note created by one of them of any size.
Listen: it comes in at about one minute, after the ethnic techno rhythm is established, but near the end it takes over the sound in all it’s rough-edged I-stepped-on-the-cat glory. Truth be known, this instrument can be tuned and played to have a lovely sound. This bit was an experiment in extremism.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/24/2011 at 01:17 PM
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff • Music •
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