Mike's Oud Forums

How close (different) is the pipa to (from) the oud?

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Paul007 - 8-17-2005 at 12:04 PM

The pipa in the Tang Dynasty (around 7th - 9th century) looks like the oud, and was played with a plectrum (The following two pictures are from the paintings of Tang Dynasty).



But the present day pipa becomes more different from the oud. The playing techniques are also different.

(from http://liufangmusic.net/English/pipa.html)

I am curious about the history of the oud.How long does it exist? Since when is the oud taken the form of today? It seems to me that there is no standard size and form for the oud making. Every oud player has their own instrument made by himself or specially ordered. The oud is beautiful instrument for its sound and its look. But it seems to me that every oud player has a different oud, at lest from the look. Is it becuase of differnt countries, or it is simply the individual taste of different oud-makers or/and musicians? The Chinese pipa has a standard measure in size and making though the quality varies.

By the way, I enjoy the oud music found in http://www.mikeouds.com/playlist.html and
the "professional sound clips" in this forum. I love oud music, its beauty, depth and its vastness (sense of space). I also discovered some beautiful pictures of the oud here.
I found the Chinese pipa (which is related to the oud in history) is also very expressive instrument, and I would like to intriduce it to you. I have put up a thread in http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=2471
which is a video clip of pipa and percussion live concert by Liu Fang and Ziya Tabassian.
You can download from

http://216.19.71.27/liufang/video/huobajiezhiye.WMV (more pieces in http://www.philmultic.com/liufang/video/index.html)

Hope you like it.
Paul
:wavey:

Paul007 - 8-22-2005 at 07:43 PM

Can anybody describe a little about the historical developement of the oud, and how it is different from country to country, or from school to school? The saw a few oud players and their oud seem to be different, some with longer necks, some with shorter necks, and even have frets that can move, and mostly no frets in the way like cello. But I am particularly interested in its history. How was it like, say thousand years ago? Is there a website for this information?
Thanks!
Paul

kasos - 8-23-2005 at 11:17 AM

Hi Paul

Thanks for posting the material on the pipa. I really enjoyed the video clip - wonderful playing, and very evocative to watch.

I'm also very interested in the historical connections between different instruments, especially those of Asian origin. Central Asia, and perhaps the silk road in particular, seems to have had this amazing role as a germinating ground for the early forms of many instruments. I think it can be valuable, not just as a matter of curiosity, but also as a practical help in realizing the potential of modern instruments, to be able to listen to and, where possible, play closely related instruments, though they originate from different cultures or time periods. I'm not sure where it will lead me, but I've recently been comparing recordings of music for pipa and gu-zheng to recordings using oud and kanun. So I completely understand your wanting to obtain further information on the common ancestry of oud-like instruments, as well wanting a better understanding how the divergences came about.

Unfortunately, phrased in that expansive way, it's potentially a huge subject, and there probably isn't a single website containing everything you're looking for, seeing that it would include both ancient history and more recent details of oud construction and regional styles. You may already be aware of them, but in case you aren't, here are a couple of useful sites dealing with the early history of the oud, with occasional reference to the pipa: http://www.oud.eclipse.co.uk/history.html (David Parfitt's site); and http://www.kairarecords.com/oudpage/oud.htm.

As to more recent information, there are lots of people who visit this site who have detailed knowledge as to current regional variations in instrument building style, playing styles and repertoire. My sense is that they're often too busy playing or instrument building themselves to write the book or create the website that would provide comprehensive answers to your questions. However, if you've got the patience to do so, you can probably put together the answers to almost all of your questions by using the search feature for this website, and judiciously choosing your search topics - eg., searching "Turkish oud" or "strings for Turkish oud", will probably lead you to detailed information on the particularities of that style of instrument.

Finally, strategic use of U to U's could help. My experience is that people on this site truly love the music and the instrument, and are usually quite happy to have an opportunity to share that passion, as long as it's on a manageable scale. If you use the search feature, and pay attention to who seems to be interested in what topic, you should be able to quickly identify who some of the more knowledgeable (and/or talkative) site members are.... You could then search for a contributor's name on the search feature, and get a virtual diary of all their entries, or try to contact them directly...

Best of luck with your inquiries....Mark/Kasos

Thanks - some initial findings and more question ....

Paul007 - 8-25-2005 at 07:04 PM

Hi Mark,
it is very kind of you. I am doing a little search according to you advice, and found quite a lot of very interesting information. Thank you indeed.
The two sites you mentioned (http://www.oud.eclipse.co.uk/history.html and http://www.kairarecords.com/oudpage/oud.htm) have been very helpful.

Here I just sort out some parallels and findings, which point out more questions:

1. The oud appeared three and half thousand years ago, and seemed to have experienced a big change around 9th-10th century to become what is like today. I still need to learn more to know the details.

2. The Chinese historical records mentioned that the oud was introduced to China through the Silk Road during the Northern and Southern Dynasty (420-589 AD). That implies that it is the fore-runner of the today's oud that was brought to China, which was called "hu-pipa" (literally foreign lute), which had a few frets, and was played with a quite large wooden plectrum (see text and photos in http://liufangmusic.net/English/pipa.html ). Today's oud normally has no frets, and is played with a soft plectrum. The only common ground between the early pipa (photos above) and oud is that both instruments played horizontally (see photos in http://www.oud.eclipse.co.uk/history.html.

3. Around 9-10th century, the pipa underwent big changes too: first, the instrument began to be played with finger nails instead of the plectrum. And the instrument sits vertically on the lap so that the left hand can move more freely. The number of frets was increased too (see http://liufangmusic.net/English/pipa.html ).
. I cannot summarize clearly for now, what changes the oud experienced during the 9-10th century. I need to do some more search.

4. When the oud brought to Europe late, it involved into lute and guitar, which differs from the oud in at least two ways: the use of fingernails instead of plectrum, and the frets. Interestingly enough, this is similar to the changes that took place when the oud brought to China in around the 5th century. However, there some big differences: the plucking fingers move toward ourside when playing the pipa, as is evident in the video of Liu Fang, while for the guitar and lute, the plucking finger moves inwards. Pipa string used to be made of silk, and played with real nails, since early last century, the strings are replaced by steel (rapped with nylon to make the sound not too sharp). From that time on, a little plectrum is attached to each finger to protect the nails.

Now these are some further questions:

1. The resonant body of the pipa is shallower today that it was introduced in the 4th century. It is produced from a whole piece of hard and heavy wood, so the pipa sound is sharp and crystal clear with less resonance, while the lute or guitar have kept more or less the original feature of oud. I am wondering why? Maybe because of the musical needs, or it was a influence from the fore-runner of the oud, that is, could it be that the very early oud was made of a whole piece of wood? and so it was called "oud"?


2. The back of the sound body of pipa is made out of a whole piece of wood, usually very hard and heavy wood, while the oud is made of thin and light wood glued together. The question is, was the fore-runner of the oud also made out of whole piece of wood? When was the strong glue material invented to enable the oud to be made in the present way?

3. Chinese historical records indicated that there existed a kind of pipa with round body and straight neck in the second century BC. The name of this instrument "pipa" was given to the oud-like pipa introduced to China in the 4th century. The original "pipa" has been call Ruan since then. The question is: was this original pipa (now called ruan, see http://www.philmultic.com/home/instruments/ for photo and text) created in China or introduced earlier from somewhere? If it was introduced, why earlier pipa (now called ruan) differs so much from the oud (and even from the present day pipa)?

I am still searching for an answer. Meanwhile, if anybody here has some ideas and clues, please do write down here, or point out links to interesting sites about these issues.

Thanks!

Paul007 - 9-12-2005 at 06:21 PM

The oud chronicles:

According to 9th-10th century legends:

The oud was invented by Lamak [sixth grandson of Adam], a direct descendant of Cain

The oud appeared in Mesopotamia during the Kassite period (1600-1150 B.C.) with a small oval body."

It was found in the "tomb of Sen-Mut, a tutor of Princess Neferura, who exercised great influence over the arts during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut from 1501 to 1479 B.C."

"A larger variety, similar to the instrument's present day dimension, appeared in a relief at Alaca Hoyuk in Anatolia dating from the Hitite New Kingdom (1460-1190 B.C.)."

during reign of the Sassanid King Shaput I (241-72).


According to two authors of the end of the 14th century:


- Reaching China, an oud like Chinese instrument, pipa featured in instrumental ensembles of the Chinese Han Dynasty (206 B.C.) - [This is different from Chinese sources, see below*]


- spread towards the Arab peninsula in the 7th century.

The founder of the ud school of Baghdad [in the 9th century]

Ziryab transported the art of the ud to the banks of the Guadalquivir in Moorish Spain, at the far extremity of the Empire."
Ziryab set about introducing the concepts of a new music, drawn from Greek, Persian and Arab elements, that was to influence deeply the foundation of European classical music."


  • Confucius (600 BC) was the first person to compile historical records about major events in the governments, society and in natures of earlier dynasties and his time. Since the time of Confucius (600 BC), China has kept written historical records till the last dynasty.

    According to Chinese historical documents, the oud was introduced to China in the during the 5th century, developed into the pipa in the 7th-9th century, and later brought to the neighboring countries.

    It is still not clear to me about the historical connection. Is there any records in the Arabic world that some oud players used their fingers instead of plectrum? How about the sitar? I saw Persian musicians play with one finger, and the Indian musicians play with two fingers. But the Chinese pipa and European guitar are played with 5 fingers, though totally different way. Who was the first to introduce these techniques? or simply by trying and error?

    I have found a nice article about the history of guitar.

    http://www.classicalguitarmidi.com/history/guitar_history.html

    From the medieval Spain to the 18th and 19th of Europe. But there are also some discussion about early history.

    And more in http://www.guitarramagazine.com/GuitarHistory

    My goodness, a lot of information, much more than I would expected. ....

    kasos - 9-13-2005 at 07:35 AM

    Hi Paul

    Interesting to hear your latest research...I rather suspected that it would be a big topic, once you started getting into it....

    In reference to your earlier post, speculating about construction made from a single piece of wood, I've encountered a fair amount of material about early bowed strings (a particular interest of mine) that strongly supports the idea of one piece instrument construction being fairly widespread in the period before 1000 AD. Indeed, quite a number of traditional bowed strings today retain this type of construction - off the top of my head, I'm thinking of a number of closely related instruments which seem to have sprung from the shared musical culture of the Ottoman empire, namely, the Cretan lyra, the Turkish kemence, the Serbian guzle, and the Bulgarian gadulka. There's also a one piece construction Chinese fiddle, with somewhat similar dimensions, which is apparently the traditional instrument of the Dong (?) people in Southern China, and which is reputedly mentioned in some very early Chinese writings. In central Asia, (Kirghizistan) there's a bowed instrument called the kil kyak which is one piece, though saddle shaped, rather than pear shaped like the ones I previously mentioned. And there's a one piece version of the sarangi (also more of a saddle shape) which is found, though sometimes under different names, in Nepal, Kazahkstan, and Iran, with some suggestion that its use extended as far as Afghanistan. Moreover, though this seems to be less widespread, they still make plucked instruments like the baglama on a one piece basis (including the neck, as is usually the case with all the bowed instruments mentioned above) in Bulgaria, presumably as a continuation of the ancient practice...

    In reference to your speculative question about the reason for a thick, relatively heavy bowl being preferred for the pipa, I think this would have developed based on practical, rather than acoustical considerations, once the basic choice to opt for one piece construction had been made. Simply put, when building a one piece construction bowl, it's prudent to err on the side of making the instrument sturdier, to support strains and stresses over the length and breadth of the instrument, without cracking or bending. All your eggs are in one basket, as it were, and you don't want to waste the large piece of wood required.... A friend of mine recently built a kemence for me, and we went through exactly the same agony trying to decide how thin we could afford to go with the bowl. When the dust cleared, my instrument is probably thicker than it should be, for purposes of optimal resonance, but that's precisely the point I'm trying to make...You can see a picture of it, along with a number of my other instruments, if you use the search feature on this site to locate "lavta info", a thread started by bcearthtones....You'll find it on top of page 2 of that thread....Take care, Mark

    Paul007 - 9-14-2005 at 03:37 PM

    Quote:
    Originally posted by kasos
    Hi Paul

    Interesting to hear your latest research...I rather suspected that it would be a big topic, once you started getting into it....


    Hi Mark,
    Thank you so much for your great help. I am very glad know that the early oud might be manufactured from a whole piece of wood. I would gues that the oud then should also sound quite differently from that of today. I am very impressed by your knowledge and I am so glad to find this forum. Yes I found the thread you mentioned:
    http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=2487&page=1
    Very interesting info and amazing pictures of your collections. I'll spend some more time and try to sort out all the information I can obtain.

    By the way, I found the terminology of the instrument is interesting; in a sense it reflects the history. I know "tar" in Persian simply means "string". So sitar (or setar?) is three string, for instance. But the Indian sitar has got more than three strings. The guitar has normally 6 strings, but what is the meaning of "qui"? From which language it come from? Does "gui" means a certain number, or is it an article similar to "the", such that guitar means simply "the strings"?

    Another term in Europe is lute (or luth, laute, laud etc in different languages). I guess this may come from the name "oud", which mean "a piece of wood". Is the "lavta" or "Lauta" you mentioned another name for oud?

    Here there are two traditions of the instrument: one named after the string (sitar, guitar), the other named after the building material (oud, lute).

    In China there is also a tradition to name an instrument according to the number of strings ("xian" in Chinese). For instance, sanxian is a pluck instrument with 3 (san) strings, long neck, without frets. Sixian is an bowed instrument with 4 (si) strings, also call sihu, where the hu means "foreign", indicating it is not Chinese origin. Duxian qin ("Du" mean single) has got only one string.

    Anyway, you are right in that it is a big subject all together.

    Thank you again, Mark.

    kasos - 9-15-2005 at 07:02 AM

    Paul, thanks for your kind comments. I'm really quite new at this, although, with what is reminiscent of a convert's interest, in the past year or so I've spent (and continue to spend) a fair amount of time reading up on non-western instrumentation, and where possible, obtaining examples of the instruments themselves....

    I'm intrigued by one of the points you touched on in your last post.
    I suppose it's possible to set up a little bit of a conundrum with the members of the oud family - although it's true that the lavta is derived from the oud and the laouta is derived from the oud - is the Greek laouta derived primarily from the oud, or primarily from the lavta? I can't really answer this question myself, maybe someone else on the site can...

    Take care, Mark

    Paul007 - 9-20-2005 at 08:59 PM

    Quote:
    Originally posted by kasos
    ......


    Hi, Mark,
    It's pleasure to discuss with you. I'm a little confused about the early history of Persia - Iran and Iraq. The oud seems to have appeared first in Iran and Iraq - Arabic world, but wasn't Iran call Persia? I thought the Persians call the instruments "tar" according to the strings, and the Arabic people called "oud" according to its making. I almost wanted to conclude that when it is called a certain "tar", such as sitar, setar or guitar, the instruments tend to have long necks and frets, smaller resonant body and played with finger nails or the like. Whereas all kinds of "oud" tend to have shorter necks and no frets, larger resonant body, and played with plectrum. But the Persia and Arabs, are they the same people? It seems complicated there. I also heard that the Indian sitar came from Persia. Anyway, it is an interesting subject. Thank you for your contribution. I'll come back when I discovered some further clues. Meanwhile, if you or anybody in this forum find interesting pages on the related subject from the interent, I appreciate very much that you put a link on this thread. That will help a lot. Thanks!
    Many thanks also to Mike for providing this nice space for discussion and exchanging information.

    kasos - 9-21-2005 at 08:36 AM

    Hi Paul,

    While it's clear that the moniker "tar" has been fundamental in the later derivation of terms for many different instruments, it may be a little unrealistic to look for such a word-root to have retained a single set of fixed meanings over a thousand years and multiple cultures on three or more different continents.... This begins with the recognition that words and instrument types can have patterns of spread and development that are quite arbitrary or independent of each other - for example, there never was much in common in terms of construction between the Indonesian rebab and the medieval English rebec, though both are ultimately derived from the same word, and both are bowed instruments. The problem is quite fundamental, and inescapable: when someone develops an alternate form of an instrument, they sometimes retain the old name for the new instrument, or they can develop a new name - in each case, confusion and paradoxes can arise, since the new instrument may be very similar to the old one, and have a different name, or the new instrument can very different from the old one, and keep the same name...

    Are you aware of the barbat, which is the Persian form of the oud? (general info can be found on sites such as barbat.us/about barbat.htm.) In considering the significance of differences/similarities between instruments in a basic short neck wide bowl family, and a long necked, small bowl family of instruments on the other hand, you might also consider deepening your research into other long necked, fretted instruments, such as the tambur, or tamboor (versions of which are found in Iran, India and just about everywhere in the former Ottoman empire including the Balkans). You might also find it useful to know more about the different instruments in the saz family (cura, baglama, divan, etc., including their relative the modern Greek Bouzouki).

    Once you become aware of all of these other instruments, I think you will find reason to be cautious about generalizations. Take frets, for example. It's true that most of the latter (long necked) type of instrument are fretted, but not exclusively (in Kirghizistan the national instrument is the long necked komuz, which is unfretted, and one of the ancestors of the saz family, the kopuz, is not fretted), while, conversely, it's also true that some members of the first group (the oud family), such as the Renaissance lute, are fretted...not to mention the Chinese pipa...

    The other thing is that historically, the construction of the guitar appears to have been primarily inspired by the oud/lute, rather than by the long necked family of instruments.... So I can't help but feel just a little awkward at seeing it potentially grouped with the long-necked group just because of the use of "tar" in the name and the presence of frets.

    It's all rather fun to think about, though....

    By the way, I should indicate thanks to you for introducing me to Liu Fang's pipa videos, earlier in this thread. Before you brought the subject up, when I had been looking for an instrument to accompany my erhu fiddle, I was leaning heavily toward a zither-type instrument (probably a guzheng), but I've now reconsidered.... This week a full size pipa became available on E-bay for a very modest price, so I've decided to take the plunge and get one....

    Take care, Mark

    Paul007 - 10-19-2005 at 11:48 PM

    Hi Mark,

    Thank you so much for the info and for pointing out the site about the barbat (http://www.barbat.us/aboutbarbat.htm). It is the first time I heard about this name, and indeed the site contains some very interesting information. So the barbat was made of whole piece of wood, similar to pipa! That may explain the puzzle. According to this site, the Persian barbat was taken into the Arabic world, and became "oud". If we could find out since when it is called "oud", then it would be great help. I wonder if anybody in the forum know about it.
    It could be "barbat" which was brought to China even before the barbat was taken to the Arabic world which became oud. Also the name "pipa" sounds more similar to "barbat" though according to dictionary, the pronunciation for the two Chinese characters standing for the instrument came from the sound of two pipa techniques produced by playing forwards and backwards with the plectrum. The upper parts of both characters are the same "picture" representing any string instrument; the lower parts are only phonetically meaningful, pronounced respectively [pee] and [paa].
    The history about the oud from this site is quite different from the previous ones. It seems to be related with the beginning of Islam, which shouldn't be that old, whereas previously I learnt that the oud exists over thousand years before Christ. Now the question: Is the oud really the decedent of barbat, or was it created independently?

    I found it is fascinating to relate history with music, and with the migration of people ... though I agree with you, this is not an easy subject at all.

    I am interested in any relevant information about this subject. Thank you again!

    Paul

    Brian Prunka - 10-20-2005 at 12:12 PM

    Interestingly enough, the world music institute is sponsoring a concert next month involving oud, pipa, and guitar as a sort of lineage-themed performance. Simon Shaheen (oud), Min Xiou-Fen (pipa) and Vic Juris (guitar)

    http://www.worldmusicinstitute.org/mahrajan/mahrajan.html

    Paul007 - 10-20-2005 at 04:38 PM

    Quote:
    Originally posted by kasos
    .... By the way, I should indicate thanks to you for introducing me to Liu Fang's pipa videos, earlier in this thread. Before you brought the subject up, when I had been looking for an instrument to accompany my erhu fiddle, I was leaning heavily toward a zither-type instrument (probably a guzheng), but I've now reconsidered.... This week a full size pipa became available on E-bay for a very modest price, so I've decided to take the plunge and get one....

    Take care, Mark


    Hi Mark,

    Just continue with my last message - how is your project? You play erhu? That is a beautiful instrument. And now the pipa! Both seem to be tough instrument to learn. Can you upload some of your recordings to share?
    Yes, I love Liu Fang's playing. I am glad that you appreciate.
    Thank you again for all the infos and links. I have learnt a lot, but appear to be more confused with the history ...

    Take care,

    Paul

    Paul007 - 10-20-2005 at 04:50 PM

    Quote:
    Originally posted by Brian Prunka
    Interestingly enough, the world music institute is sponsoring a concert next month involving oud, pipa, and guitar as a sort of lineage-themed performance. Simon Shaheen (oud), Min Xiou-Fen (pipa) and Vic Juris (guitar)

    http://www.worldmusicinstitute.org/mahrajan/mahrajan.html


    That is interesting! I wish to be able to attend the concert. Thank you for pointing it out.

    In Montreal at the Arabic world music festival, there is one concert of pipa and oud, with Liu Fang and Yousra Dhahbi http://www.festivalarabe.com/fma/content.jsp?sid=49606535719222164811430179786&ctid=1000320&cnid=1000688.

    Peyman - 10-20-2005 at 06:39 PM

    Hi Paul and Mark,
    This is an interesting discussion. In my opinion, trying to pin point the roots of an instrument is a bit futile. Many nations calim to have made the first instrument or have the ancestor to a particular instrument, (especially the case with guitars). But the truth is that instruments change through time based on technology, history, fashion, creativity etc. (sometimes with different names, or even different shapes but the same name). And it becomes very hard to distinguish fact and fiction.
    I'd like to say that I wouldn't put too much weight on what Mr. Behrouznia has put on his website about the history of Barbat and Oud. I really doubt his historical account (what are his sources?) But to clarify what he contends as the history of oud being a persian instrument, I can tell you about one of his interviews for a persian music journal. He said that prior to the Islamic invasion of Iran (Persia) about 1400 years ago, the Arabs had a skin covered instrument (I forget the name, but once I find that article, I'll cite it). Once they saw the Barbat (all wood instrument, named either after the historical musician of the Sasani court or named after a chest or even named after the shape of a bird), they duplicated it and called the oud, which replaced their instrument and then found its way to Europe.
    Many people have tried to duplicate Barbats based on old pictures found in tex books and so on. The replications are not consistent, sometimes the instrument look like ouds sometimes they look like setars. But these pictures are not from the era prior to Islam. They are either based on ouds played in the arab and persian courts or based on written description (very inaccurate) of the Barbat from the time prior to Islam, probably about 1000 years ago, after a mini cultural renaissance in Iran.
    Mr. Behrouznia is very skilled and quite an amazing player, and I have seen him live. His barbat is custom made (an oud with an extended neck to allow him to play the Persian Dastgah music, much like a Lavta). But his historical account is probably not an accurate one.

    kasos - 10-21-2005 at 08:07 AM

    Hi Peyman, Paul.... Nice to hear from the both of you again. Peyman, I think your caution about the reliability of Behrouznia's historical claims is very sound. Clearly, relying on any single source (especially an internet source not subject to peer or academic review) is always going to be something of a gamble. I suppose that's part of the attraction of a site like this forum, in that you get the benefit of many viewpoints, from all over the world, and in many cases that leads to misconceptions or inaccuracies being pointed out (usually in the friendliest of manners!). All the more credit is due to Mike and the other site administrators for making this all possible...

    In partial defence of Mr. Behrouznia, I think that while some of the detail of his claims may be somewhat overblown or speculative, I think that there is a broader point, which his contribution helps underline, if only indirectly, which is that Persia/Iran has had a very important, and often too little appreciated role in transmitting styles and instruments both Eastward to China and India, and westward to the Middle East (and from there, ultimately to Europe and Africa). It would be difficult to conceive of this process occurring without at least some local input from Persia/Iran along the way, and perhaps this creative contribution is greater than is usually imagined....

    Paul, as to details of my own situation, I think I can call the Greek themed play my group did this summer a success - we had about 1100 people attend the performances in my home community of Flin Flon, and another 1700 or so attend a series of performances in Winnipeg - as a result, our show wound up with the second best attendance out of 136 acts at the 2005 Winnipeg (Manitoba, Canada) Fringe Festival. (The Winnipeg Fringe festival had the highest attendance of any Fringe festival in North America in 2004, and although I don't know the comparative figuures for this year, I would imagine it was still pretty competitive....) Reaction to our play was very positive, especially to the music, which featured oud, lavta, lyra and kemence, along with a number of Western instruments.

    As for my own instrument purchasing and playing, I still haven't received the pipa I ordered yet (drat!), but the full size Morin Khuur from Mongolia arrived a little ahead of schedule, when my friend got back from there this past weekend. It's a new instrument which my friend, interpreter in hand, purchased directly at the main workshop/factory in Ulan Bator, together with replacement strings, hard case, the works. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it's got a cello like range, but no fingerboard and horsehair strings, so it's going to take a little while to really get under control.... A nice challenge though, and certainly adds variety to the things you can do with a bow....

    A final note about the erhu, which you mentioned, Paul.... Though I can now play simpler sorts of tunes with relatively good intonation, I'm really not ready to post recordings with it yet - maybe give me a few months... Though I'm making some strides, the biggest difference between my erhu playing right now and what you hear on recordings is the vibrato - the typical modern Chinese recording features wide vibrato basically throughout, which makes it sound a lot like a classical western violin player. Oddly enough, though I can do classical violin vibrato, vibrato requires a different technique, physically, on the erhu - the absence of a fingerboard being a big part of this. So I have to learn to do vibrato all over again...

    My other notable piece of erhu information is this tidbit, which I recently picked up: when Mel Gibson did "Passion of the Christ", he and the film score writer looked for an instrument to act as the "leitmotiv" for the devil.... and chose the erhu. I'm going to guess that the snakeskin resonator is all they needed by way of connection....for goodness sakes! I don't know whether to laugh or be indignant, I guess Mel had lots of other people complaining about his film, anyway, other than erhu players.... Anyway, I suppose that on one level it gave some welcome exposure (not to mention paid work) for a very talented erhu player with far too few performance opportunities...

    Take care, everyone....

    Peyman - 10-22-2005 at 06:58 AM

    Quote:
    Originally posted by kasos
    It would be difficult to conceive of this process occurring without at least some local input from Persia/Iran along the way, and perhaps this creative contribution is greater than is usually imagined....


    I agree with you completely. Just the geographic location of Persia helps that cause. A lot of sources do say that Barbat is the grandfather of the oud and similar instruments.
    But what I have a problem is this statment in his site: "After Islam’s attack to Iran this instrument was taken to Arabia and after a while it came back to Iran with a bit change in it." I just think it's a weak statement filled with bitterness. Even in his interviews, he seems bitter about people identifying the oud as an Arabic instrument.
    I think he would do a greater service, if he were to compile a list of resources on his site and give some technical data. To give him credit, he is writing a book on "barbat" which he says will come out in a few years. Maybe he can shed a light on the history a little more clearly that way.

    By the way, I was unaware that they use the erhu because of its resonator (I thought they used a synthesizer).
    Take care

    Paul007 - 10-26-2005 at 02:10 PM

    Hi Mark, Hi Peyman,
    I feel so lucky to have dropped into this forum by chance. The discussion with you both a very enriching and inspiring. Thank you. I have learnt a lot about the oud-lute-pipa thing. I agree with you both in that the historical threads are not easy to track down. I am wondering if there is an international institution specializing these issues? On the other hand, I can imagine that some musicians are also inspired and venture to bring all these instruments together. We seem to live in a very interesting time.

    Mark, I am sorry that your pipa has not been delivered yet. But what you are doing sounds very interesting. I searched the website and found the following: http://www.winnipegfringe.com/generic/, very interesting ideas to bring various audience together in a easy way. I'd love to see one. Please excuse my geography. Where is Flin Flon? It doesn't sound like English name. How about Winnipeg folk music festival? Are they similar in ideas?

    By the way I love the Morin Khur playing traditional Mongolian melodies. But I never had the chance to see live performance yet.

    The story about the erhu sounds funny. If you listen music before and after the cultural revolution, there are big changes. It seems to me that the Chinese "modernization" means "westernization", which certainly hurt some traditional things, including music. But there seem to have some "renaissance" too. Anyway, it is a long story.

    Thank you for the discussions. I enjoy it!

    Take care

    kasos - 10-28-2005 at 07:29 AM

    Hi Paul

    Re: Flin Flon - This rather unusual place-name is not derived from any particular language, and it's become customary to offer some form of explanation. Flin Flon is the short form or nickname of "Flintabbety Flonatin", the name of a character in a dime-store science fiction novel from 1905 or so, called "The Sunless City". "Flinty" (another nickname often heard locally) goes to the center of the earth, where he encounters an unknown civilisation, a little like the much more famous Jules Verne story, from which "The Sunless City" seems to be inspired.

    "The Sunless City" is anything but a literary classic, but it does feature one passage which led to it being immortalized, sort of, as the name of a City (albeit a very small one). This passage, right at the outset of the book, describes a bottomless lake, through which metallic gleams can be seen.

    The present day Flin Flon is a mining community, and the prospectors who discovered the original mineral deposit found a vein of copper/gold/zinc ore extending downward into a lake. One of them had just read the book (nothing else to do on a cold northern night, and even a bad book is better than no entertainment at all), and immediately connected the literary reference to what they had just found. They started calling the site the "Flin Flon deposit", and the name stuck.

    At one time, the municipal government in Flin Flon bragged that it was the only place in North America named after a science fiction character. I just hope nobody decides to update the reference to something like "Captain Kirk" or "Luke Skywalker".... "Flin Flon" is quirky enough, thank you....

    Re Mel Gibson and the erhu: I've had the chance to research this question a little further, and it seems there is another side to this story. In particular, I should let the composer, John Debney, tell his version of events. You can find an interview with Debney at http://www.tracksounds.com/specialfeatures/Interviews/interview_joh...

    He describes in some detail about how Mel was looking for something other than standard horror movie schtick, and how at one point Debney suggested the erhu, because of its "beautiful exotic sound that has this human-vocal quality to it". Mel loved the idea and it became the devil's theme instrument.

    I think Debney is genuine in his appreciation for the erhu. He took the trouble of including other non western instruments, such as the Duduk, in the score. Moreover, the devil in "Passion" is not your standard horns and hoofs type, but has this sort of androgynous, David Bowie-like charm. The erhu sound can be both exotic and suave, and certainly it does the job musically of conveying both these qualities.

    So Debney's off the hook, but is Mel? There are all sorts of instruments with a more direct connection to the middle east (including the oud, but also a number of bowed strings) that also potentially have the suave and exotic quality that was being looked for..... I suppose it would have to remain in the realm of conjecture, but it's hard to picture the director of a film which is as literal minded as "Passion" being anything but tickled at using a snakeskin instrument to represent the devil.... You decide....

    Take care, Mark

    Peyman - 10-28-2005 at 02:19 PM

    That's an interesting interview. I didn't pay attention to the music much. I have to see it again.

    Paul007 - 10-29-2005 at 12:04 PM

    oups, see Posts: 25 ;)

    Paul007 - 10-29-2005 at 12:05 PM

    Hi Peyman,

    I also agree with you about your statement regarding the relation between barbat and oud. My main confusion is that the time when Islam took over Persia was much later compared to the history of either barbat or oud: it is in the 7th century. There must be some records or paintings from that time or earlier. Is there any indication from historical records or paintings how the oud look like, and how it was manufactured before the 7th century? And how the Barbat looked like? The early history seems to be based on legends.

    Thank you

    Paul007 - 10-29-2005 at 03:47 PM

    Hi Mark,

    That is a beautiful essay about Flin Flon. I thought the name might come from the natives, or some of the languages of the new immigrants. But it is from a fiction. You are good writer. I enjoy reading it. How big is the population of Flin Flon? What are they living on? Still gold mining? That is really amazing story. Thank you so much.

    I wonder if Mel Gibson has ever been exposed to a Vietnamese Dan Bau. It is a mono cord with haunting sound. There is a piece in Liu Fang's website, but in the Chinese site only. I can place a link here:
    http://www.philmultic.com/liufang/MP3/yu_zhou.html
    Never mind about the language, just click on the "sound" icon you can hear it. It is dan bau and guzheng duet (see the photo in the same site). But on the English site, it is guzheng solo. Just would like to hear how you think about the sound compared to erhu.

    The link you placed in the above message doesn't work. I'd love to read the interview. Could you have a check?

    I haven't seen "Passion of Christ" yet. I'll try to rent a video tape. I become very curious about the film.

    Anyway, the erhu was apparently not Chinese from the origin, as its name reflects: The two Chinese character "er" and "hu" stand literally "two" and "foreign", implying "two stringed bowed instrument originated from foreign lands". I guess the resonnant body was originally covered with goat skin. Somehow, when it was introduced to China, snake skin began to be in use. But I don't know who began to use the snake skin, because snake is not a favorite animal in the western cultures, or at least not supposed to be used as part of the instrument that is often used in prayers. [On the other hand, Chinese people don't care. I know a famous soup that can only be found in special restaurants is made by cooking snake (not alive, of course, but has to be fresh). I tried once in a Cantonese restaurent, very delicious indeed!]. Therefore, I guess it might be Chinese people who began to use the snake skin. There is also a pluck string called sanxian (three string, see http://www.philmultic.com/home/instruments/#sanxian), whose resonnant body is also covered with snake skin. The sound must be quite different from those made of goat skin, but to what extent, I never have the chance to compare them. maybe you have both in your collection, and can tell us what is the major difference.

    I'll definitely see the film "Passion".

    By the way, I heard J. S. Bach composed a beautiful piece based on the same theme. I am wondering if the film has any thing to do with Bach's composition.

    Take care,

    Peyman - 11-2-2005 at 07:03 PM

    Hi Paul,
    For one thing pictures or statues can be decieving, especially the ones from antiquity (and some of these can't even be dated). You can't really conculde shape or dimensions. Yes there are pictures from that time but how accurate are they? The era in question is the Sassani period in Persia. You can see some pictures in this site: http://www.oudmajid.com/ouds.html (go down the page, right under the Egyptian picture).
    You can also read the history given by the site owner. The logical conclusion is that the father of the oud was more likely a mesopotamian instrument (the hot bed of civilisation) and existed there for a long time. The barbat might be the persian version of it. Also many persian poets and writers of the antiquity wrote that musical instruments were created by greeks (Plato in particular, who is known as the "hakeem").
    I am trying to find a translated copy of a book by Farabi, an islamic philosopher from 9th or 10th century who wrote many books about music. Only one survives (called the Great Music). He describes many instruments of that period as well as his own inventions. Apparently, he played his own created instrument with which he could make people laugh or cry.

    Maybe I can get more clues about the origin of the barbat with that book.

    David Parfitt - 11-3-2005 at 04:53 AM

    Dear Peyman

    You can buy copies of al-Farabi's books from the Libraire Paul Geuthner in France. As far as I know the books contain the original Arabic text and a French translation by Baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger, but I can't be 100% sure. Here is some more info about the books:

    Book 1
    Book 2

    Best wishes

    David

    Peyman - 11-3-2005 at 06:01 AM

    Thanks for the link David, but neither my arabic nor my french is that good. I'll keep looking for it. I know there was a listing in the library of congress.

    kasos - 11-4-2005 at 08:05 AM

    Hi Paul, Peyman, David, et al....

    Paul, thanks for the nice comments. I think you're probably right about the Chinese being the first to introduce snake skin - though I'm not personally in a position to prove it to an academically rigorous standard, it's a proposition that would be consistent with everything I've had the opportunity to read so far.

    As to why it would be used, many sources cite that the benefit of snake skin is that it is very thin, and, because it lacks hair, it is perceived to be somewhat less sensitive to variations in humidity than other resonating skin materials. The key word is "somewhat', because there is no shortage of anecdotes about even snakeskin instruments losing much of their resonance due to high humidity or other climatic factors. It's not something I've personally experienced as a significant problem yet, but I haven't yet been in a position where I'm doing a public performance on the erhu or been in some other situation where there's real pressure to maintain a certain level of sound....

    I understand that in the Middle East, Egypt and Turkey especially, fish peel is sometimes used for the same purpose. I've heard that Peyman's had some experience with fish peel... You may want to ask him about the relative merits of fish peel vs. goat skin or unborn lamb as skin resonating materials.

    Finally, as to the erhu's "barbarian" origins, it seems fairly much common ground among the sources I've seen that the earliest known written records describing bowed instruments come from China around the fifth century AD, and that these instruments were associated with the groups to the west, ie. the nomadic or semi-nomadic Mongolian and Turkic peoples of central asia.

    Peyman, David - Thanks for the reference to a Farabi translation in French. I'm fluent in that language (that's my mom's ethnic background, and I'm told I spoke english with a French accent up to the time I was about 8 years old - I also took my grade school education in French - God bless bilingual Canada...). Farabi's tomes are something I'm quite interested in obtaining for my own use (Peyman's already recommended them to me in connection with a new musical theater project), but I'm rather overun with reading material at the moment (not least because of having started a new position, though with the same employer and at the same location), and would probably not order them myself until sometime next year. I'd be happy to try to help translate short passages though, if that's any assistance to someone who's already got a copy, and is interested in checking something out right away....

    Finally, Peyman, thanks so much for the setar tracks.... I'm listening to one of them as I write this, and it's like a little bit of heaven....

    Take care, Mark

    Peyman - 11-5-2005 at 01:49 PM

    You're welcome Mark. I'll send you more later.
    I hope you do get a chance to look at Farabi's book and post your findings. It should be enlightening to us all.

    Paul007 - 11-6-2005 at 01:10 PM

    Hi Mark, Peyman, Richard, ...

    Thank you so much to share your knowledge with me and those who are interested in the subject. Recently I read something about the "silk road" and was amazed that there used to be so much cultural exchanges along the silk road. I just mention a few example:

    The Buddhist went to China through the silk road, but Chinese people found the idea too abstract, and then combined with Taoism (which is more practical), and it has become Zen Buddhist.

    The same with musical instruments:
    The oud (or Barbat) went to China, and some modification took place: By combining with the original lute (straight neck, the origin is not clear) with frets, which existed before the "oud" version came, it has become the pipa in the Tang Dynasty, preserved till the present day.

    I wish to know how the erhu looked like before it was introduced to China. Apparently changes from the shape till the making etc took place, because the present day erhu is quite different its western counterparts.

    On the other hand, some of the invention China had also went to the West, the most influential are the campus and gun powder.

    The gun powder was invented in China, used to make fire works to chase away ghosts and evil spirits, and eventually it became custom to use the fire work for celebrations too (for particular fest, such as the New Year, wedding party, etc). Curiously they never came to the idea of producing weapons. They just practice kungfu and Taiji to make a skillful worriers. But when the westerner came with gun, the kungfu is useless, and till now, it becomes subjects for entertainment movies. However, the gun powder literally changed the whole world. I wish it were never invented.

    The campus was introduced to the west, served for some good purposes for navigation, but also played a key role in the imperialism expeditions, which brought disasters to a lot of places in the world, including China.

    Both the gun powder and campus didn't bring luck to China and to most parts of the world. But music and musical instruments are shared by all peoples, invented and re-invented, loved and played, by people from any cultural background, no matter where they are from, and where they are going to! Isn't that fantastic! I saw some musicians at festivals who don't have a common language for communicating, but they play music together, very good music! I really wish that music become a world religion! That would bring real peace to the world.


    Mark, you are right! God bless bilingual Canada. I often envy people from Montreal who can speak two languages skillfully. If I get some more time, the next language I am going to learn is French.

    By the way, can those who had chance to experience the Arabic world music festival say something about what you see and hear? I am quite jealous. Thank you in advance for sharing....

    Paul007 - 11-6-2005 at 01:12 PM

    Hi Peyman,
    Can you explain something about the various kinds of skins used for instruments - what are their merits and what are their shortcomings?
    I saw a riqq or daff with fish peel, very beautiful sound indeed.
    Thanks.

    Peyman - 11-6-2005 at 04:02 PM

    This is an interesting thread so far.
    Even though I am no expert on skined instruments, I do have instruments that have different types of skin. Overall, a skin resonator makes an instrument sound more like the human voice.
    I had a turkish kabak kemane (gourd) that had fish skin on top. After having it for a while, I noticed that it smelled a little weird. All the parts come off easily on these instruments. After a little investingating, I found out the culprit was the fish skin. The underside of it had not been cleaned. So I took it out. It had an ok sound. I guess it's close to how the snake skin is on the erhu. It's a bit rougher than goat skin but thinner and not so flexible. I replaced it with a piece of goat skin. Goatskin looks like paper parchment. You have to wet it before you apply it. This is a thicker but still good enough. It doesn't have the trebel quality.
    I also have a tar that has unborn lamb skin on it. These are simply the best. They are thin, hard and excellent resonators. I think the mylar plastic on turkish cumbus are very good too, but I am not sure if you can glue these like the other types of skin.
    I wish I had recorded the sound of fish skin and goat skins for comparison reasons for comparison. Maybe some other time.
    In the previous link I posted, you can see pictures of oud covered with skin.

    Paul007 - 11-7-2005 at 11:49 PM

    Thank you, Peyman, for all the information. What you describe all sounds very interesting. It is amazing how inventive people can be, trying various of skin to get the sounds they want! Just one silly question: how can one get the un-born lamb skin? I guess one need to kill the lamb first to get the skin of the baby-lamb? I believe what you said about the sound, must be very sensitive and beautiful.
    I saw a book called "Musical Instruments - A World-wide Survey of Traditional Music-Making" written by the French ethnomusicologist Lucie Rault. Even the resonance body is incredible. People may use various woods, coco nuts, bones and turtle body for resonant body. I am attracted by all kinds of traditional instruments because of their unique sounds and color. I really love folk music festivals. Once I saw a Vietnamese girl play a kind of bowed instrument similar to the erhu except that the resonant body is the performer's mouth! She use one string to connect to a piece of wood (or something else, I am not sure) which is put into her mouth. And then she began to play - very unique and beautiful sound. She can make change the sound by some actions with her mouth. That was wonderful even when just looking at her!

    Now I have a question for every body here: I noticed that in the Arabic world, it is extremely rare to see female instrumentalist, but you see great singers such as Oum Kamsum! I ask people why is that so, but never got a satisfied answer. I never saw any lady oud player until I came across the website of Liu Fang and the Montreal Arabic festival, Yousra Dhahbi. She is known as the "queen" of the oud (http://www.philmultic.com/home/press_release/The_Orientals_en.html). According to her record label, she seems to be the first professional oud player in the history (http://shop.store.yahoo.com/discerning/yodhrhforlu9.html).
    Now my question: is there any particular reason in the Arabic world that it is easier to produce a lady singer than a lady instrumentalist?

    Peyman - 11-8-2005 at 06:39 AM

    Yes that's how unborn lamb skin is made. I know PETA was unhappy as unborn lamb's are also harvested to make coats too.

    Paul007 - 11-8-2005 at 09:22 AM

    Quote:
    Originally posted by Peyman
    Yes that's how unborn lamb skin is made. I know PETA was unhappy as unborn lamb's are also harvested to make coats too.


    Thank you! But I think for producing a good instrument that can make beautiful music, it is worht to sacrifice a lamb.

    Any comments on the other question? :wavey:

    kasos - 11-22-2005 at 03:03 PM

    Hi, Paul, Peyman...

    Finally the stars have aligned, and I'm due to pick up the pipa this Thursday. It's been a long time coming, but I'm really looking forward to it.

    Peyman, I've really been enjoying the saz which recently arrived. I haven't really made a serious attempt yet at experimentign with setar techniques on it, as you suggested, though that's on my agenda... In a lighter vein, I thought I'd add that, as a good Canadian boy who grew up playing the national sport, I'm finding long necked instruments like the saz very physically enjoyable to play, almost as if I'd been doing it all my life - it makes me laugh, but it seems to trigger some of the same muscle memories that I used to get from holding a hockey stick... don't worry, I've managed to resist the temptation to take a slap shot....

    Paul, given your interests, I thought I'd mention that I'm exploring a new theatre project, which would very much tie in with the silk road and the types of instruments we've been discussing. I'm hoping to do something in the way of an abridgement or adaptation of the Venetian Marco Polo's travels from Europe to China in the 13th century, accompanied by live music played on the traditional instruments of the regions traversed along the way. I'm quite inspired by Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road endeavors, and by the instruments themselves, in which I'm finding myself increasingly fascinated.

    As part of the overall effort, I'm making a fairly serious attempt to pick up a couple of representative instruments from each of the major regions traversed by Polo - though, admitedly, at this point, I'm not being very picky as to quality - Ebay specials will do just fine, for starters. Hopefully, after becoming more familiar with the basics, I'll have a better idea of what to look for, when getting higher end examples.

    Before signing off, I do want to talk briefly about an instrument which I recently picked up, which I can't really justify as being part of the Silk Road theatre project, but which is nevertheless pretty interesting in its own right. I'm talking about the Bulgarian gadulka, a bowed instrument which is constructed very much like the Cretan Lyra or Turkish classical kemence, with three played strings, and which is played using a fingernail stopping technique. However, what distinguishes the Gadulka is that it features 10 sympathetic strings nestled under the three main, played strings. Basically, this robs the player of any access at all to a fingerboard (the kemence and lyra retain that, at least) but in exchange, you get this very cool, harp-like reverberation/echo. This feature makes the sound somewhat louder, but more importantly gives it a sheen that makes it quite attractive even to people who aren't ordinarily drawn to non-western bowed instruments. Much Celtic music sounds great on it, for example - makes me wonder whether, since we now have "the Irish Bouzouki" as a fairly well established example of eastern instruments finding a place in Western folk music, whether it's time to develop "the Irish Gadulka"... Ya gotta love world music....

    Take care all, Mark

    Pipa, oud, barbat, etc.

    Hank Levin - 11-22-2005 at 09:14 PM

    Couple of points that may be of interest:

    First, check out this Tang Dynasty ceramic piece of a bactrian camel with musicians. One is playing what seems to be an oud/barbat type instrument.



    Other point is that I understand the word barbat to mean "duck." It's application to the instrument from Persia came from the appearance of the instrument when placed on its face on a table top.

    Barbat was carved from one piece, slightly arched back and shallow sides; but it could be quite large, from the looks of variations in old Persian miniatures.

    --Hank

    Peyman - 11-23-2005 at 03:37 PM

    Hey Mark,
    I happen to catch a movie last night on TCM (classic movies) that was very interesting. It's called: "Grass: A Nation's Battle For Life." Made in 1925, it's a documentry (first of its kind) by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, who travelled from Istanbul through Iraq into Western Iran to follow one of the Bakhtiari tribes as they migrate during winter.
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015873/
    What was interesting besides the documentation of customs and sociolgical aspects of the movie, was the choice of music. The score had famous turkish songs some arabic oud music and later on santoor and tar. The music was added in the 1991 addition. At some points people are shown playing instruments, there is a bedouin rabab player and then there is a turkish saz player.
    Another interesting aspect of the movie is that Merican C. Cooper and Schoedsack go on to make "King Kong" later on :mad:
    The movie is listed in Amazon.
    BTW, I got a copy of Farabi's great music in persian. It's not a direct translation but a commentary. I found a direct translation of it too but I think I'll read this one first as I don't want to spend time deciphering. I also have found other writings from Safiyaddin, a music writer of the 15th century. I think one of his works was on a rosette that Jameel posted with all the makams listed. I plan to read that next. I'll post any interesting findings.

    hurdygurdyguy - 11-24-2005 at 10:29 AM

    What a great forum!! I found it as a result of searching for info on how to attach/glue a skin (snake or otherwise) to an erhu body and found this forum thread!

    Although probably not on topic for oud's this thread is the closest I've found for my current project. I'm making my own erhu, the biggest challenges being constructing the hexagonal body, drilling and reaming the peg holes and now attaching a skin for the resonator. I found an ethnic drum made in Kenya (made for export) in a thrift store and thought the animal (goat, maybe?) skin would work, but when I cut it I determined it is probably too thick (it's about 1.5 mm).

    My question being is there anyone here who can give me good direction on attaching a skin to an erhu body. If not an erhu in particular, but in general? I know the skin has to be soaked then glued and fastened until the glue and skin dries, but I've been puzzled about gluing a wet/damp skin. Doesn't that dilute the glue? Or does it matter? And then there's securing it to a heaxagonal body while the glue/skin dries. On a round drum frame that's relatively easy, but how would one secure each side of an erhu evenly? I'm guessing I need to make relief cuts at the corners to eliminate the overlap of the skin at the angled corners.

    Thanks in advance for any help or direction!! I look forward to perusing the other threads as I am in, addition to being mainly a hurdygurdy player, a big enthusiast of the oud!!

    hg guy

    Peyman - 11-25-2005 at 07:53 AM

    I don't know about erhu and snake skins, but generally you don't soak the skin too long (10-20 minutes) and then you have to wrap it in a towel to get rid of all the extra water so it's not dripping when you are gluing. You can usually stretch the skin by hand or with pliers to make it thinner as you stick it on, but beware it will spring back a little. You can try scraping it thinner but I have never done this. I use general wood glue, you can use cold hide glue or even white crafts glue too.

    kasos - 11-25-2005 at 08:47 AM

    Welcome, hg guy!

    I'm glad Peyman was able to respond, I understand he has worked with goatskin resonators before. I've always found him to be very knowledgeable, and value his advice greatly. Quite selfishly, I'm very glad to get further specifics on gluing myself, as I've got to be doing some hide gluing too in the next little while. I'm almost done building a gourd kamancheh - the hide resonator's got to be placed on though, soon, and it's nice to get a review of how it's done. Longer term, I've also got a restoration project to do on another bowed instrument, a rather beat-up East Indian Sarangi which I've acquired - there's a tear in the hide (I think it's goat), and it will have to be replaced.

    HG, have you played erhu, or another fingerboardless (or keyless - let's remember to include the hurdy gurdy in the mix...) fiddle before? I'd be happy to compare notes on playing technique, on this or other fiddles - I'm by no means an expert, and don't have years of experience (on the erhu, at least) behind me, but I'm very enthusiastic about the whole range of non-Western bowed instruments, and the traditional music that's played on them.

    And finally, how wonderful to have a hurdy-g player (with oud interests, no less) on the site! Though it's not all that common an avocation in North America, I have some relatives in south-central France who are into the revival of the folk-music of the region, and I know they are VERY big on the vielle... Did you build yours yourself? (I know I've bumped into sites that seem to offer a lot of advice in this direction...)

    All the best with your erhu building project - I'd love to see pictures, if you're in a postion to post some.... - Mark

    Peyman - 11-25-2005 at 11:28 AM

    Forgot to say, use masking tape to hold down the skin untill glue dries and make sure you cut about 1.5-2 inches extra on the skin, then scrape the extra off.
    Mark, whenever you finish your instrument, post some pictures or email them to me!:airguitar:

    hurdygurdyguy - 11-25-2005 at 03:43 PM

    Kasos and Peyman,

    Thanks so much for the advice on the skin attachment!! I'm fairly well confident now I can figure out how to glue and hold the skin until the glue sets, it's just a matter of finding the right skin now. Definitely as thinner than the one I have now...I'm thinking around .5 mm or so...

    Kasos, no I've never played a bowed instrument before, let alone an erhu...but I've seen one played and was absolutley fascinated with it and figured "How hard could it be to build on??!!" Well, I'm finding out. Even though I've built many Appalachian dulcimers (and built my first two vielles from kits) they are more complicated than one would think

    I've been playing the vielle for about 20 some years and have had the great fortune of taking some lessons and workshops from some the world's best players: Pierre Imbert (sadly deceased), Gilles Chabenat and Patrick Bouffard (both from France)...in fact I highly recommend Bouffards latest group Transept and their latest cd "Second Prelude" as it features oud and middle eastern percussion prominently. Bouffard has been doing some great things lately blending eastern and western styles!!

    My current vielle I fortunetly did not build myself, but bought from a luthier who knew what he was doing!! I've modified it somewhat through the years in order to get "that sound" whatever that is!!

    I do have an oud that I noodle around with occaisionally. It was made in Cairo probably mostly for the tourist trade as it is somewhat rough in construction, but it was the right price (under $200) and I bought it from an Egyptian shopkeeper friend in Seattle...It's not in a standard oud tuning, but rather in an open chord tuning which I know is a lazy way to play but works so far for me

    I also have a baglama saz i bought in Ephesus, Turkey a year or so ago and really enjoy playing it!! Most of the instruments I enjoy have a distinct drone accompaniment

    I'm looking forward to some great exchanges of ideas and perpectives at this forum!!

    Randy (aka hg guy)

    lutes and pipas

    coyootie - 11-26-2005 at 10:29 AM

    greetings everyone. a huge number of intriguing points have been raised and I think many of them may not ever be answered fully, but those mysteries are always good for midnight contemplation!
    One theory about the origins of stave back lute type instruments is that it is a response to conserving/shortage of wood. In areas with tropical wood resources (China and India come to mind immediately)a large resonator can be hollowed out of large timber ( veena, pipa,sarod etc.)In areas like the Middle East where wood has always been a more precious/scarce commodity, making a back out of a single plank split into segments gets much more mileage out of your material.
    Also be very careful about using old iconography for historical basis about musical instruments! For some reason it seems that over the centuries, most artists ( with few exceptions for painters/draughtsnmen who were likely musicians)portrayed instruments with a remarkable lack of accuracy/detail. Look at some medieval depictions of fiddlers bowing on the wrong side of the bridge,Victorian engravings of Hindoo (sic) musicians, etc. and you will get my meaning immediately.

    kasos - 11-28-2005 at 09:30 AM

    Hi all!

    Thanks for your very sensible post, coyootie. Availability of wood must have had a lot to do with the choice of preferred building techniques in the different regions.

    Randy, I'm very intrigued by the different vielle players you mentioned, particularly the Transept ensemble. Do you have any links to suggest, or any way of posting recordings? And do you have any recordings yourself?

    Keep us all informed on the progress of your erhu.

    Peyman, what can you tell me about the Persian Tar - was it around early enough that I could consider using it in the Polo piece?

    Mark

    hurdygurdyguy - 11-28-2005 at 04:58 PM

    Kasos,

    Nearly all of my vielle cd's (and older tapes) are copies from friends who obtained the originals in France as there is limited interest (unfortunetly) here in the US. An excellent starting point is http://www.amta.fr Currently in French but I see an English version is currently in the works. Bouffards Transept album is available there plus others.

    I can post some snippets of the album (with the oud parts of course), but I'm reluctant to make available the whole album as these folks are my friends and they do try and make a living off of their recordings. But I would be glad to post examples if someone would walk me through that process!

    I found some bongos in a thrift shop and the skins were in good shape and the right thickness (almost parchment thin) so I'll be using one for the erhu (and the other as backup in case I mess up the first time :rolleyes: )

    Peyman, I'm assuming since the skin is quite thin I should not soak it for more than 10 minutes (per your advice above), right?

    Randy

    Peyman - 11-28-2005 at 07:27 PM

    Mark,
    The tar as we know it today was probably not around during that time, many poets and writers who mention 'tar' most likely meant it in the context of a 'string' or strings and not what we have now. The instrument we call tar now was originally known as panj-tar (5 strings) and it's origin is in the 16th century. Instruments like it were abundant though, tanboors, dotars, chogur etc. mostly used in folk music. I am not sure if you want to lean towards folk music or court music.
    Randy,
    Soak the skin as long as it's pliable, as long as you can fold the corners to glue to the erhu and stretch it a little. It shouldn't take that long, probably below 30 mintues. Afterwards, when the skin dries, before you put the bridge on, wet that area of the skin again so you don't break it with the bridge. And I should correct myself. Don't use hot glue and don't use any glue that wouldn't come off easily. That sort of thing will ruin the skin and might ruin the wood when you want to take it off again. All it has to is bind the skin to the erhu and you really don't need to use superglues or gorilla etc. for that. In Iran, they use sereesh. It's a glue that's made from plants and dissolves in water easily and so that skin comes off when you put water on it. I haven't found this in the US but there is also cold hide glue and crafts glue (read the back though and think about the longevity of your erhu).

    kasos - 12-5-2005 at 08:37 AM

    Question for Peyman: What are the instruments most associated with Persian court music in the period 1200-1300 C.E.? I've seen some material to suggest the santoor was used during this period. Would the santoor have been considered a court, or a folk instrument?

    Mark

    Peyman - 12-5-2005 at 11:34 AM

    I still haven't gotten my history book, but from my previous readings, the most common instruments in courts music would be ney (reed flutes made from bamboo), arghanoon (old name for the kanun), barbat (oud?), kamancheh (3 string). Chang, literally 'claw', means Harp, what these harps sounded like, no one knows but almost any musical painting depicts a harp. These harps looked a lot like the harps we see today. The tanboors, tars and chogoors were also used but more in folk music.

    I don't know much about the santoor, but it's definitely a court instrument. I have read that it might be a very old instrument but some think it's a newer invention, probably dating 400-500 years. I can ask my friend about this and will let you know.

    What I think you might be overlooking for your project is drum instruments. They were used widely in Iran in all types of music and are very important. Daf, ghaval, dayereh are some of them and are fram drums, with the daf being very important to the sufi sects. You should think about building one or buying one.

    http://www.dejkam.com/music/iran_traditional/instruments/
    http://www.usacc.org/kamancha/history.html

    Peyman - 12-5-2005 at 09:38 PM

    The picture here should help:

    http://www.sazmuseum.ir/english/index.asp

    You can identify some of these instruments.

    kasos - 12-6-2005 at 08:24 AM

    Hi Peyman - I can't thank you enough for your continuing help. Great picture you referred to, I just wish the reproduction was bigger! It's a little hard to make out the details - maybe I'll see if I can print it out and enlarge it. I guess I shouldn't complain, they don't call them miniatures for nothing!

    I found some interesting stuff covering what seems to be much the same range of instruments at the following:
    http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai113_folder/113_arti... and at http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/54_folder/54_articles... I don't want to assume too much, but, I'm taking as a basic proposition that the azeris were part of the broader persian cultural sphere - I think this fellow's instrument recreations are based on some of the same types of pictures you referred me to.

    As a technical point, I'm trying to figure out whether the zither type instrument found in the photos on the sites I just quoted is a santour, or the kanun precursor you were referring to. The arrangement of the bars seems very santoor-like to me, and that was my working assumption until your last few posts.... what do you think?

    Take care, Mark

    kasos - 12-6-2005 at 09:55 AM

    Oh, and by the way, you're absolutely right about the various drums. I already own a Turkish dumbek - my first impression was that this could also be used for Persian music in a pinch, but I am also very interested in filling out a broader and more characteristic range of drums for the region. It would be very interesting to build some too.

    I've also discovered that you've got a lot of pertinent material on your own site (unless I'm gravely mistaken, I assume that you're the Peyman of "Peyman and his Tombak" fame...), which I'll be reviewing shortly. (though, given the amount of material there, it may take me a few days to fit everything in!). I know I'll have further questions, but I'll wait until after I've read everything through before troubling you further....

    All the best, Mark

    Peyman - 12-6-2005 at 11:16 AM

    Mark,
    The santoor is exclusively played with hammers (hammered dulcimer is another name for it). The kanun is plucked with finger picks. This picture
    http://www.azer.com/aiweb/categories/magazine/ai113_folder/113_phot...
    shows both a santoor and a kanun. The one on the bottom right is a santoor and the one behind is a kanun. Santoors tend to be shorter but deeper and use metal strings. Kanuns are shallower and are longer.

    As for the azeri links, these are great. I think you get my drift about the barbat and the oud. The barbat recreated here is very different than an oud and is not at all like the barbat that was recreated in Iran. Last week, I saw a video of an azeri ensemble (I am azeri by the way, from the Iranian side), that had this instrument. It has a soft bass sound. I think one of the good points made in the article is the fact that silk threads and gut strings were used in these instruments, making them sound a lot different than the instruments today. You're right about persians and azeris sharing a common cultural heritage (there are about 30 million people of azeri descent that live in Iran).

    By the way, that's not me :shrug:. It's Peyman Nasehpoor. He is a very good professional tombak player. He lives and teaches in Iran and has great knowledge about drums. His father is a famous meastro as well as one of the greatest living voice teachers. He also runs Iran house of music http://www.iranhmusic.com which is not in English yet. You can definitely ask him questions about instruments too as he lives in Iran and has access to many resources. He has a yahoo group which I read sometimes. I think him and his brothers have posted a lot of good info on their websites.

    Peyman - 12-6-2005 at 01:00 PM

    http://www.erolparlak.com.tr/eng/baglama.php
    Erol Parlak's website has some history on the saz. Unfortunately the pictures don't work any more.

    hurdygurdyguy - 12-16-2005 at 11:52 PM

    Hey all,

    I've nearly finished my erhu (thanks to the help and encouragement of Peyman and kasos with the gluing of the skin to the frame) and would like to post a few pics but need to be advised as to how to do that.

    Do I need to type in an url to a webhost? I see at the bottom of the Post reply window "attachment:" Do I use that to attach my pics in the post?

    Randy aka hg guy

    LeeVaris - 12-17-2005 at 10:36 AM

    Quote:
    Originally posted by hurdygurdyguy
    I see at the bottom of the Post reply window "attachment:" Do I use that to attach my pics in the post?


    Yes...;)

    al-Halabi - 12-17-2005 at 12:17 PM

    Mark,

    I just read this thread and the interesting postings about the historical and geographical distribution of various musical instruments. I had one general observation about medieval music that I thought would be relevant for your project representing the music of the period around the thirteenth century.

    Between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries art music was essentially the same throughout the Middle East. One would have heard the same kind of music in Herat, or Damascus, or Tabriz, or Konya. There was during that period a shared tonal and modal system in the region. We know from the biographies of the more accomplished medieval musicians that they circulated freely in various parts of this vast area, playing for patrons in Samarkand and then in Cairo and then somewhere else where they found lucrative employment. They sang in Arabic, or Persian, or Turkish, but the educated people at the time typically had command of two or three of these languages. And they played the same set of regional art music instruments, which included primarily the oud, qanun, chang, nay, kemanche, and daf (or daire). The art music was in that sense a cosmopolitan, international music that cut across ethnic and state boundaries. It helps to think of the parallels with European classical music, which developed the same international character.

    It was after the sixteenth century that increasingly distinct Arab, Turkish, and Persian music cultures develop, each with its particular tonal/modal system, repertoire, style, and instruments. In the sixteenth century the music performed in the Ottoman court in Istanbul was still similar to what was played in the Safavid court in Iran. Many of the court musicians in Istanbul were Iranians (captured in war or hired), and they played instruments also current in Iran at the time, including the oud, santur, chang, and kamanche. In the seventeenth century the oud, santur, and chang disappeared from the court ensemble (the kamanche was displaced later, in the early twentieth century, by the kemence that derived from the Greek lyra). This shift in instrumentation was part of the development of a distinct Ottoman music, separate from the earlier, “international” style. The Turkish ensemble Bezmara uses historical reproductions of these and other sixteenth-seventeenth century instruments in its performances of Ottoman music of the period. They include the chang (cheng), kopuz (long-necked lute with a face made partly of wood and partly of skin), the kemanche, the qanun (which had metal strings at the time), the santur, and the shahrud (bass oud, tuned an octave lower than the standard oud), as well as the oud, tanbur, and ney. The ensemble has issued two CD albums that I know of. You might want to listen to them, both for the sound of the reproduced instruments and the beauty of these old pieces (some of them are composed by sixteenth-century Iranian musicians employed in the sultan’s court).

    hurdygurdyguy - 12-17-2005 at 01:01 PM

    Thanks Lee!

    My erhu is early finished (hopefully I attached the pic properly). There is only one string at the moment as I have yet to finish the bow, which is my next challenge.

    I've made a good bow frame but am now stumped with what to use for the hair. I don't have access to proper horsehair, so at the suggestion of one website (about making inexpensive folk instruments) I tried un-waxed dental floss. It's strong but won't hold rosin at all.

    Is there anyone here with bowmaking experience who could give me some advice (alternative to horsehair etc)? I'm definitely not out to make a professional grade bow, just a homemade one suitable for folk instruments etc...

    Thanks

    Randy

    Hank Levin - 12-17-2005 at 03:24 PM

    Quote:
    Originally posted by hurdygurdyguy
    Thanks Lee!

    My erhu is early finished (hopefully I attached the pic properly). There is only one string at the moment as I have yet to finish the bow, which is my next challenge.

    I've made a good bow frame but am now stumped with what to use for the hair. I don't have access to proper horsehair, so at the suggestion of one website (about making inexpensive folk instruments) I tried un-waxed dental floss. It's strong but won't hold rosin at all.

    Is there anyone here with bowmaking experience who could give me some advice (alternative to horsehair etc)? I'm definitely not out to make a professional grade bow, just a homemade one suitable for folk instruments etc...

    Thanks

    Randy


    When I was teaching folk instrument construction at the Middle East Dance & Music Camp, a few weeks before the camp I'd go to a couple of violin repair shops and ask them to save the bowhairs for me from a few re-hairing jobs. Standards for classical violin bows are much higher than what is needed for folk instruments. You may have to pick out the broken hairs from most of the tufts, and may have to combine several tufts when they've been culled. Good luck! --Hank

    Peyman - 12-17-2005 at 06:49 PM

    How did you do the bevels on the sound box?
    I have a turkish bow used for folk music that's made from fishing lines. It works pretty well and holds rosin even after 10 years. There is also Hervex bow hair, but I have never used it. It's very cheap.

    Peyman - 12-17-2005 at 07:04 PM

    Speaking of Konya and Tabriz, today is the day the Rumi died in 1273. You can listen to some of traditional (Ayin) music played by the konya daravish here: http://www.semazen.net/ you can also download some notations for some of their famous songs. I am not sure if Marco Polo went through Konya, but I know he went by Tabriz. Also the ottomans are famous for their complex and very formal military music, played by the Mehter, probably not in existence at the time of Marco Polo, but it's still worth a to take a look.

    kasos - 12-17-2005 at 11:19 PM

    Wow! Nice to see all this new activity on this thread...

    Randy, you've done wonderful work on your erhu - the sound box and hide resonator look just great! That's really the "business end" of the instrument, isn't it, and I'm very optimistic that the sound is going to be quite good.

    Although I expect it won't affect the sound, I note that the upper part of your instrument is a little different than the typical Chinese made examples, in that it has a rudimentary pegbox - all the traditional ones I've seen, including my own, simply have the pegs go through an extension of the same piece of wood as is used for the neck - the only difference being that on the area where the pegs go in, the neck's wood is squared, rather than rounded - after the second, or highest peg, the extension of the neck then bends back a little, or ties to an ornamental attachment curving in the same rearward direction. Again, as a question of innovation vs. traditional ornamentation, your pegs are also more western looking than one usually sees - the typical Chinese style ones are very long indeed - mine are all of six inches long, and are groved lengthwise at the back. [My Thai rebab also features very long pegs, as compared to the area of penetration, about 4 inches as compared to a one inch shaft - this seems to be a common characteristic in Southeast asia, but I note that the Thai pegs often come without grooves - grooving the pegs seems to be a trait indicating Chinese origin or influence - one sometimes sees it in Vietnamese instruments, for example]. I suppose, if imitating traditional models is at all an issue, the instrument could be made to look rather more Chinese by carving out new pegs more on the traditional model - probably not all that hard to do, especially if you or a friend owns a lathe (a friend of mine with a lathe was able to duplicate a long Thai style peg quite handily, when my 6 year old son accidentally stepped on the edge of the original peg and broke it a few months ago - never, ever leave your instrument lying on the floor, however briefly!....).

    These comments are offered as a matter of comparison, not criticism. I think your instrument is a great success exactly as it is, and it will certainly play just as effectively as one with more traditional design.

    Out of curiosity, what are the dimensions of your instrument? - The overall length for mine is 31 1/2 inches, top to bottom...

    On the question of hair, if you want to build your own bow, I would recommend, as Hank does, finding some individual or group of persons with an ongoing connection to bowed string playing. It's almost guaranteed that they will have one or more bows that for one reason or another have become inoperative, while leaving the hair intact - the economics of bows are such that, except for high end bows, in most cases it's less costly to buy a new bow than to repair or rehair the old one, which leads to an almost endless supply of old hair. (I've got at least 2 bows in that condition right now). You might also consider just buying a cheap kid's partial size violin bow - you should be able to get one for under $50.00, and sometimes much less. Remember, it's your erhu that's the rare item, not the bow....

    And, in time, please feel free to discuss playing the erhu....I don't mean to alarm you unduly, but the erhu is one of the more volatile bowed instruments one can play - there's so much that can go wrong (even more so than on a violin, say, since the instrument is so fundamental in its structure, and the player must control everything himself - for example there's no fingerboard to help equalize string tension generated from stopping notes, whereas some of this occurs more naturally as a result of instrument structure on the violin or other instruments with fingerboards, such as the oud). I think you'll find it very rewarding if you persevere - precisely because you're doing more at once, on more levels, it's probably more engaging, note for note, in a wholistic, organic sort of way than a more elaborate instrument such as the violin. Just be very patient with yourself at first (and since it's possible to come up with some truly horrendous sounds, try to practice out of the earshot of significant others, at first, if at all possible!).

    Al Halabi, Peyman, thanks for your continuing help and support in my Polo project - I can barely express how useful and inspiring your contributions have been. By way of update, I've been able to order (on an affordable basis) two new instruments for the project in December - what appears to be a Kashgar-made Dutar (yet another case of an E-bay seller with an uncertain appreciation of the origin or even the name of the instrument), and a 16 string gu-zheng zither. Since the Dutar is a fairly ubiquitous central asian instrument type, I'm quite optimistic about getting some good musical mileage from it in the context of the different settings of the play. I'm excited about the gu-zheng too, not so much because of its versatility, but because it evokes the far east so effectively - it sounds very much like the Japanese Koto, with which it is closely related.

    I'm making some progress restoring the very beat-up indian sarangi obtained last month. I've been able to get the main melody string playable, at least, and I'm getting hints of this bowed instrument's characteristic sound, despite the fact that about half the sympathetic strings are still a mess. Those really thick gut strings are a wonder - not loud, but such a thick, rich tone, with a physicality quite unlike modern cello or double bass strings.... Though I'm informed that these are typically stopped with the fingernail, like the lyra or kemence, it's been very tempting to play it like the erhu, with the pad of the fingers - physically, it's very satisfying that way, and seems to really milk the richness of the gut string, although one has to admit that the fingernail-stopped sound has more edge to it, and is very much the effect one hears reproduced on many recordings.

    Peyman, in looking up further references, I've been delighted to find out that the sarangi was traditionally used in qawalli music, before the harmonium became customary. I don't yet know how far back the sarangi-qawalli link goes, but it's nice to know that I may be in the ballpark, already, in terms of having some of the appropriate instrumentation for the East Indian part of the story. Still looking for some indication of how far back the use of what is now known as the Afghani rebab goes, and whether its use can be traced to medieval times in the Indian sub-continent. My guess at this point is that it probably was present, but it's still only a guess...

    My plan has been to obtain at least one plucked string, one bowed string, and one percussion instrument from each major region, so as to get either a reasonably convincing regional ensemble sound, or variety between solos when I want it. So far, I've got bowed strings for pretty much all the regions I want to cover (bowed strings are very much where some major part of my heart lies, I guess), but I'm still missing plucked strings from India and Persia.

    There's also the question of what the most appropriate percussion instrument for these regions would be, given the time period. I've got a Turkish doumbek, and I'm reasonably confident I can justify its use in many of the settings. I've also got access to a frame drum (though it's a Celtic Bodhran - I'm going to have to research just how this type of instrument varies from middle eastern versions). I love the sound of the Indian tabla, and it would make a great contrast to the doumbek, but I'm suspicious that its modern version has not been around long enough to justify its use in this play, if I want to be really historically correct.... What about the persian tonbak, in this respect?

    Best wishes to all,
    Mark

    Peyman - 12-18-2005 at 08:23 AM

    Hi Mark,
    I am glad I can help. I am actually building myself a dotar. I am using a gourd. Gourds were used in many folk instruments from Turkey to India and still used for instance in Turkish Kabak keman and Indian sitars, tampuras are gourds too. At first I thought the gourd split in two would look like the back of a dotar or tanbur (this shape is called Kashkooli in Farsi) a semi oval shape versus a tear drop shape seen in the setar and some tanoors. But when I opened it I noticed it looks more like a sitar's sound box, sort of hear shaped. The thickness of the gourd is about 11mm and I have been chipping away to make it about 3-4 mm. As I remove more skin the gourds shells get tougher.
    I am now thinking about how I can make the neck joint strong or how thick I should get the neck joint. The dotars from Khorasan have 2 cm necks. The gourds neck is about 4 cm. I'll see what I can do.

    Albert Lavignac (musicologist, French?) wrote that the oldest bowed instruments were found in India, dating about 5000 BC. They were called Ravanastron. And I am sure the connection between bowed instruments and many kinds of Indian music is very strong.

    I have a feeling that the current afghan rabab has some close connection to the persian Tar. The word rabab has been used to indicate bowed instruments, but in the old persian language it meant 'heavy or sorrowfull music.' Afghan robabs have sympathetic strings and it might be that it shares a common ancestory to the Tar. I have an antique robab, which has a very sonorous bass sound. The robab has found its way into modern persian art music because persian art music lacks bass instruments. The persian made robabs are somewhat different. They have longer necks with more frets and a smaller number of sympathetic strings (about 6). They actulally look a lot like the Tar.

    On the question of the tonbak, I know it's a very old instrument. Despite its simple look, it's a very complicated instrument to play. All parts of the instrument are playable and its sound is very different than a darbuka. See Nasehpour's website: http://nasehpour.tripod.com/peyman/
    He has info on many middle eastern drums.

    kasos - 12-18-2005 at 03:00 PM

    Hi again! This is addressed to Randy, re the erhu bow. I did my last post fairly late last night, and realized this morning that I really didn't talk at all about what I should probably have begun with, which is that the traditional erhu bow is used in a completely different way than a western bow, or middle eastern bow, and is constructed a little differently to take this unique playing style into account.

    As you know, the erhu has only two strings - nothing particularly unique about that, many rebab type instruments from Egypt to Thailand share this characteristic. However, in China, an ingenious method was devised of taking advantage of this fact, to economize on bow movement. Instead of only rosining up one side of the bow hair, the hair has rosin applied to it on both sides, and then the hair is inserted between (!) the strings, and reattached to the bow (to accommodate this, the hair is looped on one side, and it catches onto a sort of hook provided at one end of the bow, usually at the tip, or narrow end of the shaft of the bow). Then you play the string on the far side by pushing the bow into it, and the string closest to your bow hand by pulling the hair into the string instead. It's a little strange, if you're used to other bowing techniques, but it's certainly functional, even elegant in its economy, from an applied engineering perspective.

    All of that being said, I have to admit that I also sometimes bow my own erhu in a non traditional way. Depending on my mood, I occaisionally use the bow on the outside of the strings, using western cello hold (palm down, thumb in the gap of the frog), or in a middle eastern ( or viola da gamba, if you prefer) hold, palm up, thumb on top of the shaft, third and fourth fingers on the inside of the hair. My own experience suggests the easiest for controlling the sound is the middle eastern hold - but I find that this can be affected by many factors, including the sound quality I'm looking for, and my degree of physicality that day - ie, whether I'm agressively digging into the string, or skidding on the surface. The erhu is highly susceptible to small changes in pressure, so each of these things can be factors. The bowing style can emphasize your natural playing style or pull back from something that you might be overdoing....

    Hope all this helps.

    Take care, Mark

    hurdygurdyguy - 12-19-2005 at 09:54 AM

    Mark and Peyman, thanks for the nice remarks on the erhu!:bowdown:

    Yes, the design is a bit of a departure from a traditional erhu. The main dowel does not extend through the sound box as a traditional does but is glued to the top with the aid of a wood brace. I saw this on a website showing the work of a Chinese maker who made this innovation in order to allow the sound box to resonate as much as possible. Thought this was a good idea so I adopted it for mine.

    In the interest of time, skill (or rather lack of), and materials and tools at hand I simplified the peg area to what is shown. I was able to use two old hurdy gurdy pegs (longer than violin or viola pegs...and much cheaper) but they are still smaller than the massive pegs found on a traditional erhu. And I fashioned an adjustable sliding nut rather than a wrapped/tied one. And the back of the sound box is not nearly as intricately carved as traditional ones, just holes made with various diameters on a drill press, but I think it still looks good.

    The length is about 73.6 cm. The current string scale length is about 44.5 cm but that is adjustable as I experiment with string gauge and tuning. I'd like to tune it to d and a or d and g (to make it compatible with my hurdy gurdy). Mark, how is yours tuned, what string gauges to you use and what is your string scale length?

    Todays project will probably be trying some fish line for bow hair. I'm a fly fisherman so I have lots of fishline of various sizes.

    Randy

    hurdygurdyguy - 12-19-2005 at 10:13 AM

    Peyman, I forgot to add: the sound box bevel cuts I made on my bandsaw and then used a belt sander to correct any gaps in the joints before gluing. Once it was glued I applied some fiberglass resin to each joint on the inside to strengthen the joint.

    I soaked the goatskin for about 10 minutes, applied glue to the box (the edges of which I rounded off so as not to have such a sharp edge for the skin to wrap around on), wrapped this tightly with string, pulled the skin as best as I could to work out as many wrinkles as possible (it still has some wrinkles at the corners) and then lightlly clamped all the sides. When the glue had set I carefully trimmed all the excess. Worked like a charm!

    The bridge's bottom edge is also eased as to lessen the likelyhood of cutting into the skin when the strings are brought up to tension

    Randy

    Peyman - 12-19-2005 at 03:11 PM

    Very innovative Randy. Your instrument looks great. What kind of wood is the sound box made from? And did you taper the pegs?
    BTW, good quality horsehair is expensive but you can get horse hair from luthier suppliers (lmii, etc) and they are not that expensive or you can find a horse and trim some hair off it! I thought you were looking for alternatives. That's why I suggested the fishing lines.

    kasos - 12-19-2005 at 03:38 PM

    Hi again.

    This time, my comments are addressed to Peyman....Thanks for your latest contribution, helpful and informative as always.

    I'm very excited about your dotar - if you can, I'd love to see some pictures, when it's ready. Mine just got ordered, I probably won't see it in Flin Flon until some time next year - so we'll compare notes, in time. Although I've posted at least one picture before myself, it was with a borrowed camera, so I'll not make too many promises about pictures yet. I've got enough new instruments since that time that it might make sense to have a new "group" photo taken. Perhaps Santa Claus will help with my own digital camera shortly....

    About the ravanastron - I had bumped into references to this instrument before, chiefly in European sources dating from the 19th century, or in later works using the 19th century scholarship as their source material. I'm thinking of books like "Violin Making, as it is and was", by Ed Theron (I hope I've got that right, this is by memory), first edition 1885 or so. Fetis, a famous French encyclopedist, also included a reference to the ravanastron. Rightly or wrongly, I have been suspicious of these references, in no small measure because they come from a time when historical scholarship was sometimes not very discriminating. I also think that much early european scholarship is strongly influenced by the fact that expansion in India by both England and France occurred very early on, and was of course consumated by incorporation of India into the British raj. I think that as a result, source material from India was a lot more accessible in the 19th century, and historians, very practicallly, elaborated theories based on the material they had at hand. For example, early on, the British Museum obtained a copy of a ravanastron (which incidentally, seems to be much the same instrument, as a matter of construction, as the Egyptian rababa), and this no doubt helped stimulate European scholarly imagination.

    Some months ago, I looked closely at the passages in "Violin Making", referred to above, and observed that the really hard evidence (temple carvings, mostly) dated from the 800-1300 C.E. period, whereas the earlier references being relied upon, were in words only, vaguer in their content, and often seemed to be more in the character of tradition and legends. Clearly bowed instruments have been around in India for a long time, but it may be quite possible to reconcile the available hard evidence with a theory of origin in central asia between 200 and 400 C.E., the time of the earliest Chinese references. The central asian theory remains tempting, because the patterns of spread of bowed instruments from that time forward, eastward into China and westward into the middle east, is relatively easy to track, and forms a neat, convincing picture.

    It would be very interesting though, to see someone with a good musicological background combined with training in Sanskrit have a good hard look at the original sources, and see if the 19th century historians got it right after all.

    By the way, there's some very lucid material on spread of bowed instruments, from 800 C.E. on, in the following article about the rebec: ww.crab.rutgers.edu/~pbutler/rebec.html .

    I have other questions to ask about the robab you have, but these are extensive enough to warrant posponing them for another day, given the length of this post already....

    Mark

    hurdygurdyguy - 12-19-2005 at 04:13 PM

    Peyman,

    The soundbox is oak (you'll laugh at this, it was a 6 ft. length of pre-finished flooring I found at the hardware store!), the dowel is maple, I think, the back of the soundbox is walnut as is the peg section, and the nut and dowel brace are cherry.

    I did taper the peg holes. I eyeballed the taper of the pegs and drilled a smaller hole on one side and a slighltly larger hole on the other (only about 1/3 of the way in) and then found a round tapered file and laboriously reamed out the hole. By luck the taper of the file was nearly the same as the peg so they fit very well, turn smoothly and hold tight!

    One of these days I'll have to invest a little bit and get a violin tapered reamer and peg shaver

    I checked out a luthier supply website and found the Hervex hair you mentioned above...looks pretty good (and much more affordable...even jigs and tools for tying the hair), I may get some of that after I try out the fishline...and some friends have offered the hair off one of their horses! LOL

    Randy

    kasos - 12-20-2005 at 09:26 AM

    Hi Randy. Nice to see the back of your erhu - I really like the design - simple but satisfying. It complements the look of the rest of the instrument in a quite stylish way. I wish I had more specific technical things to say about the woodworking, etc., which looks very smart indeed to my eye. But my own skills are very rudimentary, and my instrument building relies heavily on collaborative work with friends who are more expert than me - thank goodness I've got them!....

    You asked about tuning - At least one web site I've seen (and given my home location, and the absence of in-person teachers or mentors, I've had to rely on the web for virtually all of my information) refers to the erhu as having a range and sound similar to that of a viola, so one would expect the lowest string to be tuned somewhere below middle C. However, I haven't found much more specific info on what tuning they use in China, so I've tried quite a variety of different tunings, and different strings, too, particularly since the erhu I have had only one string on it when I first got it.

    I suspect that a tuning in fifths would be pretty normal - but in order to expand the range, for most of the time I've had it, I've had it tuned to a minor 7th, with the low string to E below middle C and the top string to D above middle C. I'm sure that I'm losing some of the sympathetic string vibration that I would get with 5ths or fourths, but I find that the snakeskin top amplifies the sound sufficiently that's it's not as necessary to rely on sympathetic vibration to fill out the sound, as it might be with some wood topped instruments (my Thai rebab, for example). If anything, I found I had to tinker with the position of the bridge to cut down the sound output somewhat, since it's very easy for the instrument's sound to get "boomy" and coarse, at least to my ear.

    [I'm able to make this wide spacing between strings work, in no small measure, because I'm doing some of the string-stopping with my thumb (the fleshy part on the bottom side, nail towards me). I'm stopping with the pad of the finger tip, applied lightly (but not so lightly as for harmonics on the guitar or violin).]

    The lower string, as I mentioned earlier, came with the instrument, and it plays comfortably from about the E I've currently got it tuned to (I've taken it as low as D below middle C in a pinch, but it really doesn't work well any lower than that) up to about B flat. I'm afraid I don't have a string gauge measurement. I tried a few different strings (no exhaustive search, just what I had around) on the top position, and finally settled on an electric guitar E string (like settling for vanilla at an ice cream shop with 80 flavors, I guess). I'd have loved to try violin strings, but they're just not long enough. I'm sure your hurdy gurdy strings, if long enough, should be serviceable.

    By the way, the instrument was also bridgeless when I got it, so I experimented a lot with different woods and designs. I'm still not sure that what I've come up with is what I'll settle for long term, but it was the best and most flexible of the lot I've tried to date. To make it, I carved and filed a weather worn small piece of what I think is spruce from an old fence, and came up with a shallow arch, curved at the top, and two wide legs on each side. This isn't what the Chinese bridges look like, but it best satisfied the sort of sound I was looking for. What you have on the picture you posted is closer to the traditional type, but still not exactly the same - there are no shortage of pictures of the Chinese bridges on the internet, and they're relatively affordable, if ever you should decide to order one separately, if only for comparison purposes.

    Just a last thought about the bow - why don't you try making several (including one with your friends 'au naturel' horsehair) - the length, weight and flexibility of the bow all have their impact on sound quality, and it may well be difficult to know just what works best for you until after you have tried a few different things out.... Even after you've settled on your favorite, it's fun to change bows every so often, just to keep things fresh.

    take care, Mark

    hurdygurdyguy - 12-20-2005 at 10:15 AM

    Quote:
    Originally posted by kasos


    Just a last thought about the bow - why don't you try making several (including one with your friends 'au naturel' horsehair) - the length, weight and flexibility of the bow all have their impact on sound quality, and it may well be difficult to know just what works best for you until after you have tried a few different things out....


    I was thinking exactly that! The bow was pretty easy to make, an afternoon at best...here's a pic of the frog assembly. I fashioned together an eyed screw to a metal spacer, to the other end of which was a long machine screw, the nut to which was glued/embedded into the wood piece which was sanded round like the dowel. A bit of minimalistic elegance :))

    Thanks for the thoughts on your strings. I'm also finding all my info on the net!

    Randy

    Peyman - 12-20-2005 at 01:59 PM

    That bow is pretty neat looking. I am tempted to make one too. I guess the fishing lines worked?
    I'll post pictures of my dotar when it's done.
    Here is a picture of Torkamans playing dotars and a very small kamanche:

    Peyman - 12-21-2005 at 08:21 AM

    Mark, what you say about bowed instruments makes sense. It makes sense that bowed instruments would be favored by nomadic people that do everything with bows (hunting, attacking, making fire, competitions) and would figure out many other uses for a bow.
    The rebec website is very comprehensive. I like fig 15. The fiddle is held vertical while the rebec is being played like a violin. Then on fig 21, the rebec is held upside down.

    Paul007 - 1-11-2006 at 12:24 AM

    Hello every body,

    It is amazing to see such in-depth discussions, intellectually and artistically. I can't help but think that I "fell into" the right forum by chance! Thank you all, for sharing your knowledge and experiences. I found all discussions are interesting and stimulating! I'll come back after some more search! Thank you all!

    Happy new year!

    Paul

    My Rebab

    oudmaker - 1-16-2006 at 09:37 AM

    Folks
    Attached is the REBAB I made in 1970ies for myself. This is probably my 15 or 20 th rebab I have made. First one was in 1956. I have detailed pictures but I dont take advantage of Mike's generosity
    Regards
    Dincer

    Re: My Rebab

    hurdygurdyguy - 1-16-2006 at 11:46 AM

    Dincer, that's a mighty fine looking rebab! Thanks for the pic!!

    Mark, I'd tried a number of hair materials for my homemade bow for my erhu...cotton thread came the closest (held the rosin the best), but I broke down and ordered an erhu bow from an importer (good price...$25). And I ordered erhu strings. What a difference proper materials makes!! I was just using guitar strings before and it seemed difficult to get a proper tone (I just guessed on the string gauge I needed based on a string length comparable to a mandolin or mandola). With the real bow and strings I'm able now to play the erhu!! What fun! I found the website of Jiebing Chen which had a short video of basic bowing, so now I practice bowing everyday!! :D

    One question: how much tension from the frog should the bow have? I'm assuming the bow hair should not be slack but I'm thinking the bow iteslf should not be bending too much (if at all) from too much tension, right?

    Thanks!

    Randy

    Peyman - 1-16-2006 at 08:46 PM

    That's an amazing rebab Dincer bey. I like the beautiful inlay down the neck. I am curious to know if you ever made any tanburs or saz's.

    oudmaker - 1-17-2006 at 03:13 AM

    Peyman
    I sent you an U2U
    Dincer

    kasos - 1-17-2006 at 08:09 AM

    Hi guys, nice to see the 'pipa thread lives on....

    Dincer: What a beautiful instrument, very tasteful decorative touches, from the inlay down to the delicate shaping of the bottom spike. Thanks so much for posting the picture.

    Randy: Very glad to hear that the erhu playing is coming together. Yeah, I'd imagine the right strings make a lot of difference!.... The erhu's sound is very susceptible to small changes in pressure and tension, each of which can be affected significantly by the string you're trying to use. For future reference, can you post info on where you got yours?

    As to the bow, I think the proper tension is to some extent a function of the tightness of the strings - if the strings are very tight (due to the pitch, or in combination with the type of string being used), I've had better results with a slacker bow, and vice versa in the case of loose strings. I guess it's a balance thing (yin-yang, since we're dealing with an erhu, after all?)...

    To be honest, the whole question of (mechanical) bow tension is a much bigger issue if you're using a "western" bow hold, like a violin or cello (the fact that you asked the question at all leads me to guess that you probably are). If you use the eastern style, palm facing you, thumb on top of the wood and fingers pressing down on the hair, the issue doesn't come up as much because you control/adjust the bow tension on an ongoing, moment by moment basis. Also, when using this grip, feel free to creep up the shaft of the bow, well past the frog, to wherever you get the most satisfactory control over the sound. Depending on the bow, the instrument, and your playing style, this may be several inches up from the frog!

    Finally, a little note on the pipa itself, the "raison d'etre", I guess, of this thread. I've had my pipa for some weeks now, and have been experimenting with different strings and tunings. Right now I'm using DADG (lowest to highest), although I'm getting the impression that DADA is probably more conventional. The strings that came with the instrument were silk wound, and had an interesting sound when open, but simply were too old to play in tune when using the frets. For now, I've substituted a mix of silk wound and classical guitar strings, stuff available locally. Long term, I have little doubt I'll be better served by obtaining strings specifically designed for the pipa - a young friend of mine just started a job teaching English close to Nanjing - I'm hoping she'll be able to help me out in this respect.

    The pipa's frets are quite a new experience. They're wood, for starters, rather than nylon or metal. The high frets (located on the body of the instrument) are 3/8 " elevated, while the lowest frets (nearest the pegs) are elevated up to 3/4 "! Though quite workable, it's a very different feeling than playing a guitar, lavta or saz..... Sort of like playing on a trampoline or high wire!

    The other thing that's physically different is the weight of the instrument. My lavta is extremely light, by comparison to a steel string, or classical guitar, but the pipa is much more heavy than either of them. For a while, the sheer weight made me think that the body of the instrument was a solid block of wood (no resonating chamber at all) but I've modified this over hasty opinion - the soundboard has a hollow, rather than a solid wood sound when knocked, and there is a soundhole, albeit a very small one, hidden away under the bridge/tailpiece, part of which is raised over the hole.

    Oh yes, and then there's the upright playing position..... Also very workable, but sooo different.... It's quite a tall instrument, which means your left hand (fingering the notes) goes some distance up into the air, even more so than when playing the cello, say....

    For now, the pipa "lives" at my office, together with my kemence. My current practice pattern involves playing some lavta and classical guitar in the morning before work, a bit of pipa and kemence in my office at the end of the working day, after the rest of the staff have left for home, and bowed strings in the evening, back at home. I've now got quite a few of the latter to chose from, though right now my favorites are erhu, lyra and gusle - the gusle is my most recent acquisition, a one stringed Balkan bowed instrument, similar in construction to the kemence, but with a hide top.

    I don't have a digital camera of my own yet, so I'm a little restricted in my ability to post pictures. I'm hoping to borrow one in the next little while, and hopeful post a few shots of some of the instruments in question.

    Take care, all....Mark

    Erhu bow source

    hurdygurdyguy - 1-17-2006 at 11:48 AM

    Mark,

    Here's the url for the source I found for my erhu bow:

    http://www.chineseculture.net/guqin/instruments/erhuist.html#

    I found another site (http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/vim/cgi-instrument.cgi?id=19) with a nice performance on streaming video. What was most intereseting to me was how slack the bow hair is, plus your advice is most enlightening

    Well, I'm off to practice!!

    Randy

    handiro - 1-17-2006 at 11:52 AM

    First let me say I am delighted to see such interesting threads in this forum and to read the many
    well written posts by the members here.
    Much has been said and I think most of it is right. I want to add a little spice to the discussion by
    adding another instrument to the family : the Sarod .
    Since I have played the Oud in India I have been told by my musician friends to pick up the Sarod, so I started buying records of various artists and listening, pretty soon I decided Amjad Ali Khan to be among my preferred players. I had the luck to meet him 2 months ago and he told me about his website and what do I find there ?
    A story of the Rabab and how it developed into the Sarod. One thing I found interesting: the Rabab he cites has a skin covered top! So does the Sarod .
    here is the link:
    http://sarod.com/sarod/default.htm

    Erhu bow source again

    hurdygurdyguy - 1-17-2006 at 11:53 AM

    Sorry, folks...I mis-typed the url for the Wesleyan.edu site

    Here it is:

    http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/vim/cgi-bin/instrument.cgi?id=1...

    That should work...

    Randy

    kasos - 1-18-2006 at 07:47 AM

    Hi again...

    Handiro: Thanks for your contribution to this thread. The sarod is a beautiful instrument, with a rich tradition and outstanding living and recently deceased performers, who have given the world many compelling recordings to listen and learn from. Though the sitar tends to have a much higher profile, I personally find myself rather more drawn to the sound of the sarod, which is mellower, with less "twang". Its playing range seems to involve some lower pitches as well, more in the same range explored by oud and lavta players - maybe another reason that it seems to "fit" for me, more easily than the sitar, at least for the time being. I'm seriously considering getting one sometime in the next year or two, but they usually aren't cheap, so some planning and budgetting will be involved....

    You mentioned the Afghan style rebab as well, an instrument which is usually acknowledged as the precursor of the sarod. There is an American jazz player named Larry Porter who learned to play both sarod and Afghan style rebab, becoming something of a virtuoso on the rebab, at least. There are some lovely recordings of his rebab playing available, (in their entirety, for free, in streaming format) on his website http://eastwestmusic.com/listen.htm.

    My favorite from this site is the "concert under the stars" http://eastwestmusic.com/listen_02.htm
    It's a live concert, available in what appears to be its entirety, originally performed at a park in Berlin in 2001 with an Afghan-born tabla player. It's perfect, down to little touches like the background noise from nearby young children.... wonderful, both poised and spontaneous, the way music should be.... I can't recommend it highly enough! It's hard to hear recordings like this and not want to go out and get a rebab too! So little time, so much music and so many instruments.....

    Randy: Thanks so much for the reference re the erhu materials. I'm very glad you're giving so much time and attention to the erhu. I encourage you to bring up whatever you may have questions about - I know it's sometimes a little hard to find teachers or peers on this instrument, when in a North American location, so I'll do what I can to help out. With the amount of practice you seem to be putting in, I'm sure that I'll soon be the one asking you for advice!

    Take care all, Mark

    kasos - 1-19-2006 at 08:33 AM

    Hi again...Can't take credit for finding this myself, Peyman sent it to me in a recent E-mail. Further to the initial mandate of this thread, being to explore the links between pipa and oud/barbat, please find at this location http://www.shayda.net/Barbad.html a well researched investigation into precisely this question. Summary: lots of cultural and linguistic reasons to link the two - notably, because of transliteration of b's into p's, pipa may actually be the Chinese way of pronouncing barbat.

    All the best, Mark

    Paul007 - 1-25-2006 at 12:10 PM

    Quote:
    Originally posted by kasos
    Hi again...Can't take credit for finding this myself, Peyman sent it to me in a recent E-mail. Further to the initial mandate of this thread, being to explore the links between pipa and oud/barbat, please find at this location http://www.shayda.net/Barbad.html a well researched investigation into precisely this question. Summary: lots of cultural and linguistic reasons to link the two - notably, because of transliteration of b's into p's, pipa may actually be the Chinese way of pronouncing barbat.

    All the best, Mark


    Hi Mark,
    Thank you so much for this wonderful link, and all your posters which have been very helpful. Indeed it is the most informative article I have read by far about the origin of the pipa and its relation to the west. The phonetic approach from Barbad to pipa sounds very interesting. However, archeological findings (from ancient tomb) show that the pipa before the 4th-5th century looks very different from Barbad or oud (see the attached picture), whereas the present day pipa bares a strong mark of the barbad or oud. I am still not sure as to when the barbad or oud went to China.

    From the written documents and archeological findings, the original pipa appeared to be made of a wooden drum and a long stick, with 4-5 strings and fewer frets which are still in use by some minority in the remote area of south-west China (particularly in Yunnan province). In central China this instrument developed and later around 6-7th century got the new name "ruan"; The new instrument which arrived from central Asia through the silk road took over the name "pipa" which refered originally to the ruan. I am still not sure about the historical connection there.




    All discussions along the thread is very enriching.
    Peyman's and all other oud friends' posters have also been very helpful.
    hurdygurdyguy's new erhu and oudmaker's Rebab are very impressive! I wish to hear how they sounds. You are very creative!
    Thank you all for sharing your passion, ideas and knowledge.

    kasos - 1-26-2006 at 02:04 PM

    Nice to hear from you again Paul - I had my first pipa erhu duet session over the past weekend - seems to work best when the two instruments are working in different octave ranges....

    In particular, this approach to registration of arrangements seems to be greatly enabled by the fact that the pipa is very "live", in terms of volume and tone quality, in its higher registers - I suppose this is probably a function of its long scale length, relative to the oud or even the lavta....

    Of course, as a bowed instrument, the erhu has no problem maintaining a prominent level of sound in the high register - if anything, the effort is to try to keep it from sounding shrill.... lots of vibrato, as per what seems to be the traditional style I've heard in recordings, apparently does the trick in respect of the latter issue!

    Mark

    Paul007 - 3-16-2006 at 08:12 AM

    Hi Mark,

    I haven't heard a duet piece for pipa and erhu, and I'd love to hear how it works. If there is a chance that you post a clip of your recording, that would be great.

    I appreciate all info you have provided. I believe that you can be excellent ethnomusicologist.

    Thank you.

    hurdygurdyguy - 3-16-2006 at 11:17 AM

    Hey all (in re to Paul)!
    Last month I had the pleasure of attending a Chinese Cultural Concert here in Bellingham which featured (among others) the Silk and Bamboo Esemble, a group based in Vancouver, B.C. (I think) and performed stunning renditions of Chinese Folk melodies in addition to solo pieces on erhu, gaohu, Jinghu, and pipa. The bowed intruments were amazing, but what truly popped my eyes and ears was the pipa solo!! The articulation, speed and emotive nature of the musician (Liu Guilian fro, Beijing) was incredible...if ever there was a rock star equivalent in the world of pipa performers she would be it, hands down!!

    A truly remarkable evening!!

    I continue to practice my erhu in short sessions almost everyday (almost...I don't subject my family to my enthusiasm on the weekends ;)

    I agree with Mark, lots of vibrato definitely covers a world of sins!!

    Randy

    zalzal - 3-16-2006 at 12:33 PM

    Pipa seems to be a mostly female played instrument....

    hurdygurdyguy - 3-16-2006 at 12:58 PM

    Just another note:

    My family and I will be spending about 2 months in the Middle East starting about the middle of May (barring any annoying political developments)...mostly in southern Israel (at an archeological dig near Eilat), but hope to visit sites in Sinai and Jordan (would love to see Amman again!!) What bowed and plucked instruments could anyone recommend I keep a lookout for? Is the kamancheh found here? or something similar? I'm hoping to add to my ethnic instrument collection, something I could actually play rather than become a wall decoration!!

    Randy

    kasos - 3-16-2006 at 01:40 PM

    Hi, Paul, Randy - I'm delighted to hear from you both.

    Paul, thanks for your encouraging words.... Ethnomusicology was my major in my third year of my Bachelor of Music program, back in the early 1980's....So much has changed since then, both in the world and in my personal life. After graduating from the music faculty, I became a professional pianist, then eventually went back to school and trained as a lawyer - now I'm an administrator in the public service. Back in the 1980's, in my part of the world, period and ethnic instruments costed a fortune, if they were available at all, and things like the internet and Ebay didn't yet exist.... So much more is possible now - I can access music and musical instruments in a way I could only dream of then.... and correspond with wonderful people all across the world about the experience, in forums like this one.... Thanks again to Mike, whose magnificent obsession enriches us all....

    Randy - so nice to hear that you're persevering on the erhu. I also continue to play the instrument. Quite a bit lately, really. One of my ex-violin students' mom is from Taiwan, and she got her relatives to send me real erhu strings....I agree with one of your posts above, to the effect that getting the right strings is a very liberating thing - everything is easier, and sounds better.

    Over and above the beneficial effects of having proper strings, and better vibrato - God bless you for remembering that hint! - I feel my playing has made strides in other respects as well over the past little while, mostly due to a sort of intervalic tuning exercise I've been using - just in case it's any help to you, let me describe it.

    If I want to get an interval in better tune, say, E to G, I chose an alternate interval right beside the one I want to improve, one that involves changing the reach of the finger that's prone to going out of tune. So if it's the top note that goes out of tune, I'll use E to G# as the alternate, or set off interval, for purposes of the exercise.

    First, I'll alternate the target and set off intervals - E G, E G#, E G, E G#, then I'll put in a slide between the target and set off note, as follows:
    E G slide to G#, E G# slide to G, E G slide to G#, E G# slide to G. Then I go back to the E G, E G# version, etc... until I'm "done to a turn"!

    It may sound simplistic, but I've never found anything more effective for quickly teaching fingers where the proper intervals are. You still have to listen, of course, to tell whether you're in tune or not, but I find this type of practicing makes my finger find the right pitch more quickly and more often, and reduces the number and range of the small corrective pitch adjustments that one makes when you first hit the note slightly "off".

    I have to admit that such corrective adjustments were becoming a real issue for me, since I now have a whole menagerie of bowed instruments that I'm trying to keep abreast of, each with a different scale length, and many with somewhat different playing angles or string stopping techniques. I found I needed something to speed my muscle memory along, and this really seems to be helping....

    By the way, what I described above is the 'simple' or basic form of the exercise. If you find it useful, you can also profitably use it in an extended form, where the fixed finger (the E in the version of the exercise described above) is exchanged for a fixed set of notes. So, instead of E G E G E G# E G#, you might get D-E G, D-E G#, D-E G, D-E G#.... and then for the slides, D-E G slide G#, D-E G# slide G. [just in case it isn't clear, the slide will involve the same finger on the G and G#, while the fixed pitch pair of notes (D-E) would involve changing fingers, probably the index and middle finger in the example in question].

    By the way, I've tried to adapt these exercises to my oud and lavta playing - they're helpful there too, but the slides are less satisfying because of the lesser sustain on plucked instruments - the exercises really shine best in bowed string situations....

    Moving along from pitch exercises, since my last post on this thread, I've also done a fair bit of playing on another recently acquired Chinese instrument, related by nothing but its country of origin to either the erhu or pipa. I'm referring to the guzheng, a long oriental zither. This one's about a yard long, rather short for a proper zheng, but it's doing the trick for now. It's got 16 strings, tuned pentatonically (going up) D E G A B d e g a b d' e' g' a' b' d''. Each string has its own bridge, which can be moved to change the pitch (one can tune it like this, or change the tension on the pin, whatever is easier). One can get very interesting bent pitch effects, by pressing down on the string on one side of the bridge, either before, or after you pluck the note on the other side.

    The guzheng's sound is quitessentially far eastern - similar intruments are played in Vietnam, Korea, and Japan (the Japanese version is called the koto - if you're familiar with keyboard synthesizer/samplers, most of them will feature at least one koto preset). However, cultural/historical considerations aside, on a practical level, it's a very gratifying instrument to play - the pitch bending is quickly mastered, and (I suppose I'm exageratting, but only a little) the pentatonic scale tuning means "no wrong notes, ever!..." It's highly addictive, and I'm afraid that, before too long, I'll have to find a way to get a full size one - not a small matter, literally, since they run to 5 and 6 feet long!....

    With the addition of instruments like the guzheng, I'm closing in on my goal of acquiring all the instruments necessary for my Polo/Ibn Battuta project. My most recent acquisition is a medieval style viele/rebec, to be used to help musically represent Polo's departure and final destination point in medieval Italy. I'm also moving along in my historical research - I've made it through some very interesting book length commentaries on both Polo and Ibn Battuta's journeys. I have to say, I've learned so much from the enterprise, and enjoyed it so much, that I feel it will have justified my attention, whether or not it ever succeeds as a stage piece.....

    All the best, Mark

    kasos - 3-16-2006 at 02:02 PM

    Hi Randy - seems you made a new post while I was drafting my latest voluminous response....serves me right for being so long winded!.... Your trip sounds very exciting. I've never been to that part of the world myself, but, from the reading I've done, I expect you should be able to find some sort of bowed instrument from the rebab family - the only question is what might be the local variant.

    It seems to me that there was some discussion in a post earlier this year about a sort of flat rebab, with a skin (which apparently functions as a sort of soundboard) stretched between a wooden frame. There was a suggestion that this was an instrument known and played in Syria (and further south in Arabia, too, if a number of E-bay references I've seen are accurate) - if so, I would expect you'd find it in Jordan as well. There is also an Egyptian instrument that seems to be most frequently referred to as a rebaba, which uses a coconut as a resonating box, covered by a skin membrane. I would suspect that there are probably a few of these around, if one were to ask .... As for the Kamencheh, I've seen it discussed more in the context of Turkey and Iran, though there's no reason it couldn't be present in Israel or Jordan as well....

    As for plucked strings, I'm quite certain you'd find some interesting ouds, in either Israel or Jordan, at much more affordable prices than in North America, given that you'd be taking care of the shipping yourself.....

    Take care, Mark

    David Parfitt - 3-17-2006 at 12:09 AM

    Mark,

    You have probably seen it already, but I found a nice site relating to Ibn Battuta:

    Ibn Battuta on the Web

    Good luck with your project!

    All the best

    David

    zalzal - 3-17-2006 at 01:22 AM

    Do not forget this year is the 600th commemoration or anniversary (i do not know how to say in english) of Ibn Khaldoun, the great tunisian (andalousian origin) scientist, philosopher, historien.

    http://www.babelmed.net/index.php?menu=438&cont=1986&lingua...

    AGAPANTHOS - 3-17-2006 at 03:49 AM

    Hello Paul
    I am going to say few words on this very interesting topic about the long origins of the oud. I believe that this effort in researching the evolution of the instrument in time and in space is essential and valuable.
    When we have to go back in the far past i think that it is better to do a lot of guessing, instead of being sure about anything.
    As far as i know there are different approaches to this subject. The coexistance and the close interrelationship between the great ancient civilisations of the greater East Mediterranean Bassin(Babylonian,Asyrian,Egyptian, Mycenean,Minoan,Classical Greek e.t..c)can give evidence that the far past origins of the instrument were located in this geografical area.
    The ancestor of the oud traveled a lot from place to place among the boarders of this vast region. The evolution of its shape and role were propably slow and multilateral.
    The main scenario i believe contains the following two essential stages:
    -In the early Hellenistic period the ancient Greek Barbytos ( the origin of the Persian Barbat) took its way, from the Alexander the Great to Persia , and from there and along "the Road of the Silk" arrived in China (the Chinese pipa).
    -During the flourishing of the Arabic civilisation. from the 7th to 9th century,
    a type of byzantine lute (descendant of the ancient Greek Barbytos)spread out within the Arabic pennisula. This instrument became one of the main instruments which were used by the Arab theorists to develop the Arabic musical system. This instrument were propably the immediate ancestor of the Arabic oud of our days.
    It is well known that there are several versions of the Arabic oud today(the oud arbi, the oud sarki, the iraqui oud and the bashir oud).
    It is true that the development of the Ottoman school of oud,although the establishment of the instrument in the corpus of the Ottoman music is relatively new (from the end of the 18th century), is continuous,consistent and more coherant in comparison with the Arabic schools.

    kasos - 3-17-2006 at 09:23 PM

    Thanks, David and Zalzal, for your research recommendations.

    I'm very pleased with the Ibn Battuta site, in particular. Though I'd seen some of the material it includes as links, somehow I'd missed it so far.... Perhaps the person who assembled the site may have some insights to share about Battuta, or about my project. I'll probably try contacting him, just in case, in the course of time...

    Take care, Mark

    Paul007 - 3-22-2006 at 01:34 PM

    Hi AGAPANTHOS

    Thank you for the information. That is very interesting. Could you provide some references or sources?
    Thank you

    Paul007 - 3-22-2006 at 01:39 PM

    Hi Mark,
    Your experiences and persistence in the arts are very impressive. I don't play any instruments, but have great interest in music, and the associated history. The migration of instruments and the meeting of cultures in history in fascinating. I wish to have time to explore a little more along the line.
    Take care

    hurdygurdyguy - 5-1-2006 at 11:54 AM

    Hey everyone!

    Just a quick post on the pipa/oud/erhu thread:

    I made some changes on my homemade erhu. As you can see I took off the block of wood the pegs were fitted through and refitted them through the dowel. It does look less clunkier and better. I also changed the nut arrangement. Previously, I had the strings going over a wooden block that could be slid back and forth to change the pitch easily. The new nut looks more like the traditional erhu nut that is wound and tied with thread, but is still a sliding block of wood which the strings pass through via a tiny hole. The intonation seems to be a bit better this way also.

    I was thinking of adding some sort of decoration at the top but it would need to be removable in order to be able to remove the nut at some point for repairs or maybe a new improved one!!

    hurdygurdyguy - 5-1-2006 at 12:08 PM

    And a closer look...

    The visual balance of the instrument just never really looked right and after I saw a similar erhu (pegs through the dowel) at a concert a few months ago I decided I'd just cut that block off!

    Now it looks better! I just have to get it to sound better...aka more practice!!!

    Aside: we're about 2 1/2 weeks away from leaving for Israel/Sinai. We had planned to spend sometime in Dahab on the Sinai peninsula (I remember lot's of great instruments for sale there from 10 years ago), but the recent bombing has us rethinking that...sigh, worldwide cultural exchange would be so much easier without having to factor in the violence!

    kasos - 5-1-2006 at 12:35 PM

    Hi Randy - nice to hear from you again.

    I like the changes....the look is good, and I'm glad to hear that the sound is favorably affected too.

    Notice there's a bit of padding behind the bridge - I've seen pictures of the instrument done up this way, but I haven't tried it yet - perhaps I might get around to that soon.

    I was checking out the bow, too, and your/its stance, as it appears in the picture. Seems you're using the same hand hold I'm using - but looks like you're playing on the outside of the strings, yes?

    I have to admit that I was doing that a great deal early on, as well. It was practical, and frankly easier, given its more direct relationship to violin technique. But back in February or so, I finally knuckled down to fitting the hair between the strings (playing from the inside, rather than the outside, as it were) and just leaving the bow there, basically forcing me to learn to play that way, in earnest, instead of just as an alternative. From my present vantage point, the "shock therapy" seems to have been worth it. In particular, I have to say that the traditional bow placement seems to add considerably to the volume of the instrument - I'm not sure why, but it just does, and considerably too. Prior to my starting to bow the traditional way, the instrument wasn't very loud, and the idea of muffling it (as you're doing) didn't seem to be necessary - now, I'm not so sure....

    Just to keep up my tradition of long posts, I'll add in a bit of my local Chinese instrument news - I've had some further success in interesting various local musicians to begin to learn some of the Chinese instruments I've acquired - one young lady who is one of my violin students has taken up the pipa - her mom, who's from Taiwan, and tried unsuccessfully for years to get her daughter to take traditional music seriously, is just thrillled.... Fortunately, I think I'll be getting my instrument back soon (she's now got it on loan), because relatives will be sending her one of her own.

    I may not get off so easily with the second situation. I discussed the gu-zheng, a chinese zither/table harp, in one or more of my posts above. I think I referred to it as very beginner friendly, not least because of the pentatonic tuning. Well, my son who's just got back for a summer home from his first year at university, and who, like most of his generation, lives and breathes Japanese anime movies books and games, has taken a shine to the instrument (it's known as a 'koto' in Japan). There's apparently a scene where someone is playing one in 'Hero', which he immediately recognized..... However, now I'm a little concerned that he may want to bring the instrument back with him to college in the fall (his school's about an 8 hour drive away).... Of course, on the bright side, that might justify me trying to get a new (maybe full size 5 foot long) gu-zheng - silver linings to every cloud, I guess!

    Hope to hear from you all soon, Mark
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