I have a thing for strings. Olga also has a thing for strings, and together (thanks to the generosity of various friends and family) we've amassed quite a collection. It should be 66 strings all told, except that the lute-guitar needs to be restrung.

All our instruments

Let's see. Starting easy: on the ground there is a guitar and an accordion, and some miscellaneous bangy things (bongos, thumb piano, cymbals and a mouth harp, also a tin whistle) on the chest of drawers. Also on the chest, standing proudly, is an oud. Left to right along the wall are: Marama the mandocello, Takis the baglamas and Panagiotis the tzouras, a mandolin, a saz, a kemane (sans bow, which we managed to leave in Greece), and a lute-guitar.

Several of these (kemane, tzouras, baglamas) are traditional Greek instruments. We play mainly rembetika with the tzouras and baglamas; we don't know quite what to do with the kemane yet, since neither of us can really handle a bow (even if we had it).

Panayiotis is a tzouras: basically a trichordo bouzouki made to three-quarter size. We bought him from a luthier in Polygyros, about an hour out from Thessaloniki. His tuning is DAD, the same pitch as the bouzouki. The strings are doubled, and actually run Ddaadd: one wound low D paired with a plain high D (an octave pair), then straight pairs for the A string and high D. (Yes, that means three of the six strings are the same pitch.)

Takis is a baglamas, the tiny baby brother of the bouzouki and tzouras. His string setting is the same (Ddaadd) but an octave higher than the tzouras.

He's really tiny.

Tiny Takis

Marama, on the other hand, is rather larger.

Marama and me

She's a mandocello, sometimes called an Irish bouzouki. She was built by Peter Stephen in New Zealand for bass virtuoso Mike Fudakowski, who passed her on to me. I keep her tuned DAEB, in unison pairs. To be honest she doesn't get played as often as she should.

Here's the three of them, to show the various sizes.

All three

Thanks

We wouldn't own so many instruments if we didn't have extremely generous family and friends.

  • The kemane, the saz and the oud are all presents from Olga's parents.
  • The accordion is on long-term loan from a cousin.
  • Panayiotis was bought with birthday money from Greek friends and family. (We said "Don't buy us presents, help us buy an instrument!" and they did.)
  • Magali and Sjoerd gave us the lute guitar.