Tambura tamburica with Farkas tunin: demonstration скачать в хорошем качестве

Tambura tamburica with Farkas tunin: demonstration

A demonstration video of a Croatian tambura using the Farkas tuning system of 1/2 frets. The 1/2 frets on the upper double-string course play the 'black key' notes as on a piano, those on the lower course give the 'white key' notes. It's hard to find much info on this kind of tambura, I've yet to find any videos of them being played. Mostly what I know is this tuning system was created by Milutin Farkaš in the early 20th century, when Balkan nations were undergoing a 'de-Turkicization' process. There's a great book by Richard March, The Tamburitza Tradition, in which he writes about the social history but not so much the organology of tamburas in Croatia. The one I play in this video was made at the Eduard Vondracek workshop in Prague, and they produced this kind from the early 1920s to just after WWII. This one, thereby, is as much as nearly 100 years old by now. There was another kind, similar fretting but with 1/2 frets only on the bottom strings for 'black key' notes and the other frets were full frets. They were made around the same time but remained in use for longer; the 2-row 1/2 fret version became obsolete by the 1950s and the 2nd kind continued until maybe the mid-60s. They were both pushed out of use by tamburas with 3-4 double-string courses, so more range, and the newer ones also were made with more 'guitar'-like bodies, I guess to distance the instruments from their "oriental" origins. Muslim communities in the Balkans still use older forms of tambura like the Bosnian šargija. The way I'm playing it in this demonstration is my own guesswork and invention, based on my experience with playing, and observations of how, other tamburas and other Balkan long necked lutes are played.