Good morning, everyone. I’m new here and found your forum and little community incredibly enlightening on so many topics. So I’d like to ask for your advice. After many years, I’ve picked up the bouzouki again as a hobby, and I’d like you to suggest another musical instrument that could be played alongside it by a friend who would like to start learning too, so that we can play the odd song for our friends. I know the guitar goes with everything, but I’d like to hear about another option besides the guitar—another stringed instrument, ideally.
(If there’s already a similar topic, please forgive me, but I couldn’t find one despite searching.)
Welcome, George!
Depending on the repertoire, various combinations have been tried over the years, beyond guitar or baglamas, which are perfectly in keeping with the style.
The closest pairing would be bouzouki with lute or oud, but it can also be combined with piano (or keyboards for volume control). Beyond that, any combination that comes about through the company, chemistry or aesthetics is welcome—it’s up to the musicians to make it work. I’m thinking of a cello or a percussion instrument, for example, but I’ve also been in a venue with a didgeridoo which, if it hadn’t been in C♯, would have made for an interesting musical backdrop!
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Thank you for the welcome and the prompt reply. In general, we imagine the repertoire as the sort you would hear in a taverna: a bit of light rebetiko, elafrolaïko and perhaps a traditional song or two to liven things up.
We would like the style to remain centred around the bouzouki (by which I mean instruments such as the baglamas or the laouto you mentioned).
Could it be a tzouras, for example?
And, unless I’m mistaken, is the laouto mainly used for traditional music, or can it also be used in more laïko or rebetiko repertoires?
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The tzouras will have a very similar timbre and range, so it won’t add much to the overall sound. The laouto provides perfectly good accompaniment; after all, it is the ancestor of the folk guitar (along with the oud).
Have a look at the duo Nikos Kontalipos – Giorgos Manouselis to see how beautifully they blend and how brilliantly they play!
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Thank you very much for your answers!
I think I’m leaning towards the baglamas or the laouto.
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The possible combinations are endless, but the guitar has one important advantage: it is such a standard pairing that the way forward is already well established. Thousands of duos and larger groups, from the early years of recorded music to the present day, can show us all sorts of ways in which the guitar and bouzouki work together.
For less explored combinations, such as with a didgeridoo in C♯ (the German model), there will certainly be ways to produce something beautiful and well matched, but you will have to discover them for yourselves.
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and an accordion, the keyboard instrument of its time!
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Oh, of course, how could I forget!
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I think the less commonly used combinations also require a lot of knowledge and experience to achieve a good result when it comes to “blending” the instruments, which unfortunately we don’t have. (Everything can be learned; we’d just like to take the easier routes.) I think it’s easier to find resources that way too.
Of course, it’s impressive to be able to blend two instruments that you’d say don’t go together and produce a good result.
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These are more “emotional” instruments.
Very nice idea. Thank you, we’ll look into this option too.
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Maybe slightly off topic, but let’s not forget the presence of the bouzouki in Crete
Although now limited to the point of being virtually extinct, the bouzouki was also played alongside lyres in the past
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Yes, but as a side dish, if I’m not mistaken.
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Of course, we’ve seen this one before too:
Lyra Kareklas on bouzouki at 4’40’’
(This style no longer exists, and from the time when it did exist, there are hardly any recordings apart from a very few — I don’t think I know of any others besides this one — so there’s no basis for comparison.
…But honestly, the two of them play brilliantly!!)
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Manasakis had made a type of bouzouki so that he could play using the system he had devised because of his disability. He also had a unique playing style. The more widespread traditional urban instrument here is the bulgari, which is quite similar to the bouzouki but has a deeper sound. I think it blends nicely with the other instruments because of its frequency range.
As for the bouzouki George asked about, I like it with the accordion. I also tried it with the laouto, and it’s not bad at all, in my opinion. Percussion instruments with integrated zills (defi, bendir, etc.) also work quite well—the only downside is that you won’t have any harmony.
I haven’t tried cello with the bouzouki. With the laouto, though, it’s something else.
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Every type of ensemble featuring a laouto has emerged from various experiments in which the laouto ultimately prevailed. Before things settled into their current form, experiments had also been made with bouzoukis, mandolins, mandolas, boulgaria and so on. Specifically, the bouzouki as an accompaniment to the violin or lyra, in place of today’s laouto, has also been used in Crete, which we have already mentioned, as well as in Lemnos, Ikaria and elsewhere.
But in my opinion, these are things that cannot really work today. In the video with Kareklas, the absence of bass is glaring. Back then, they did not consider it essential. Today, personally, I find it more essential, given the presence of a plucked instrument, than if we were listening to just a lyra or, I don’t know, a lyrondavlo, which in any case belongs to a radically different aesthetic. However, when we approach today’s aesthetic, the ear has developed certain expectations — namely, to hear at least some bass — that cannot be ignored.
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Hello! Apart from the guitar, a very nice option to accompany the bouzouki is the mandolin or the laouto (Greek lute). Both blend beautifully with the bouzouki and are often found in traditional or folk music. The lyra or even the kanun, if you’re looking for something a little more distinctive, would also add an interesting sound to your ensemble! Have fun rehearsing!
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