Showing posts with label gudok. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gudok. Show all posts

01 January, 2011

Gudok

It was hard to find this instrument cause name of instrument translates as "toot".

Some information from Wikipedia:

The gudok is an ancient Eastern Slavic string musical instrument, played with a bow.

A gudok usually had three strings, two of them tuned in unison and played as a drone, the third tuned a fifth higher. All three strings were in the same plane at the bridge, so that a bow could make them all sound simultaneously. Sometimes the gudok also had several sympathetic strings (up to eight) under the sounding board. These made the gudok's sound warm and rich.

The player held the gudok on his lap, like a cello or viola da gamba. It was also possible to play the gudok while standing and even while dancing, which made it popular among skomorokhs. Initially in the 12th century (and probably before), the gudok did not have a neck for pressing strings. This suggests that it was played by stopping the strings from the side with fingernails (similarly to the Byzantine lyra), rather than pressing strings onto the instrument's neck. Later in the 14th century some modifications of the gudok had a real neck for pressing strings.