Yovan Tsaous instrument's tuning

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1

Dear rebetiko fans,

I am sorry for being unable to write in greek, but I would like to share this with you.

I recently had a close look to the description of Yovan Tsaous instruments in the book of Stavros Kourousis “From Tambouras to Bouzouki - The History and Evolution of the Bouzouki and its first Recordings (1926-1932)”.

After performing some calculations (hopefully without errors), I think that it was tune exactly like a Turkish TANBUR, but with some missing notes.

Here is an example for a string tuned in D
Fret 0 : RAST(D)
Fret 1 : NIM ZIRGULE
Fret 2 : ZIRGULE
(missing DIK ZIRGULE)
Fret 3 : DUGAH ?
Fret 4 : KURDI
Fret 5 : DIK KURDI
(missing SEGAH )
Fret 6 : BUSELIK
(missing DIK BUSELIK)
Fret 7 : CHARGAH (G)
Fret 8 : NIM HICAZ
Fret 9 : HICAZ
(missing DIK HICAZ)
Fret 10 : NEVA (A)
Fret 11 : NIM HISAR
Fret 12 : HISAR
(missing DIK HISAR)
Fret 13 : HUSEYNI
Fret 14 : ACEM ©
(missing DIK ACEM ASIRAN)
Fret 15 : EVITCH
(missing MAHUR)
(missing DIK MAHUR)
Fret 16 : GERDANIYE (D)

And repated to the second octave …

What do you think about it ?
That would explain why bouzouki player could not play on his instrument !

But i still do not understand why the SEGAH note is missing (perhaps because the instrument other strings were tuned in C or G, which make appear the note SEGAH ?)

Cheers
Eric
(from France)

3

αυτο θα ηταν πρέπον να το εξετάσουν οι μακαμιστές μας και να το απαντήσουν.
δεν νομιζω να περιμένει ο φίλος απο Γαλλία ακόμη την απάντηση, αλλα εμεις οι υπόλοιποι, θα ωφεληθούμε.

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4

hello, kalimera, i want to learn the taximi from TSAOUS which Spyros told me, but i mean it would be very good to have a tambour, where in athens i could buy a tambour. i mean diamanto alaniara from Yovan.

xairetismata

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5

Hello Simon
i am not sure what you mean by Tambour.
There has been some discussion about the instruments of Tsaous. 2 survive, made by Lazaridis.

I assume all of the recordings we know done using those.

Some luthiers make copies of them, not sure how accurate

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6

Ναι, ευχαριστώ, alk, αυτό ακριβώς εννοώ.

7

It is indeed one of the outstanding taximia of the rebetiko discography, but really a bouzouki or tzouras is good enough to play it.

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8

I was interested too on the subject, I found this excel sheet that might help if you make changes on the length of string:
Tanbur Fret Location.xlsx (130,6 KB)
(from Mike Oud’s forums)

9

This appears to be a setup for a Turkish Tanbur which is essentially a single-string instrument (with sympathetics etc) of a much longer scale, with the maximum numbers of movable frets. Although number and placement of frets is a matter of interpretation and discussion, this system is probably not what Tsaous had.

10

Νομίζω ότι υπάρχει άρθρο του Σταύρου για τα δύο σωζόμενα όργανα του Γιοβάν Τσαούς, που λέει αναλυτικά ποιο παίζει σε κάθε ηχογράφηση.

Με την ευκαιρία, ας θυμίσουμε κι αυτό:

(Συμμετέχουν πολλοί από το φόρουμ.)

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11

Yes I agree, and I do not know if the excel spreadsheet is correct. However it provides a guideline for distances on the fretboard.
According to this video - presentation on the creation of a replica of Yovan Tsaous instrument, the modifications he made were very few:

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12

Tanbur (with this spelling) is a classical Ottoman lute with a very long neck and with the most detailed fretting of all fretted instruments. The one with semispherical body and no soundhole. A very specialised instrument, that no one can play with just some knowledge of bouzouki.

Yovan Tsaous’s instruments were unique. A non-tempered variant of bouzouki, in two different sizes and tunings. Unknown (at least to me) from any other source. And they are often referred to as ταμπούρι or ταμπουρομπούζουκο.

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