... Continued from pt. 4

The Pontic Lira

The Pontic lira is a lira that is slim and bottle shaped and that has a finger board upon which three steel strings can be stopped. All three of the steel strings are tuned into fourths. This instrument features a nut like the violin does, and its bridge is responsible for resting right on the face of the sound board, over a sound post that is internal within the instrument.

Fiddles From Scandanavia

Norway has a fiddle known as the hardingfele or the hardanger which is shaped similarly to a violin, however it has a neck that is slightly shorter and also decorated using acanthus patterns drawn with pen, inlays crafted from mother of pearl and a figuratively carved head as well. What make this instrument different are two different features:

• The fingerboard and the bridge are both much flatter than in a violin, which makes the bowing of more than one string the normal way to go, which produces a drone effect as a result.
• The sound is enhanced to a silvery type of ringing as a result of the presence of an additional four or five different sympathetic strings that are responsible for running underneath the bridge, running to extra pegs that can be found in the peg box.

Among the Swedish folk fiddlers of today, there is an increasing use of a much larger instrument featuring sympathetic strings which is usually known as a drone fiddle based on the instrument known as the viola d'amore. There are also other European regional relatives of the violin as well, including the viola which has three strings and is nearly flat, and the three stringed bass which is played in fiddle music from Eastern European countries including Romania and Hungary. Another instrument is the Zlobcoki, which is a slim pocket-style violin that is used by highlanders in Poland, especially in the Tatra mountains of Poland. Transylvania also has a similar instrument known as the utogardon, which is shaped as a cello would be but it has strings that are alternately plucked and hit with a stick to produce varying sounds.

Another instrument is the phonofiddle, also known as the Stroh violin, which is similar to a violin, at least as far as the player is concerned. However, there is no sound box with this instrument, but rather the strings make a vibration that is passed to resonating metal by way of the bridge before reaching an amplifying horn that is pointed directly at the audience, with a second horn directing sound back to the ear of the player. These instruments continue to be created and played for various purposes including by fiddlers in some of the Roma bands located in Eastern Europe.

Photo Credits: Sven Cipido

Originally posted 2009-08-31 03:19:46. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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Acoustic Musical Instruments, Fiddle, Instrument History

Tags:

drone, eastern european countries, fiddle music, fiddlers, fiddles, finger board, fingerboard, hardanger, highlanders, lira, mother of pearl, pegs, pocket style, scandanavia, steel strings, stringed bass, swedish folk, sympathetic strings, tatra mountains, three strings