Greek baglamas played in Persian setar style - Cc G c tuning

I am humbly trying to play my Greek baglamas, smallest instrument in the bouzouki family, like an Iranian setar. What makes it so unique, is it’s rhythm hand movements; nakhon. For which the index finger is snapped back and forth, into and out of the palm, as the other fingers remain stationary. This is a very, very different technique from plucking or strumming. In Farsi, you call it mezrab either way. That name is also used for plectrums for the Indian sitar, the Iranian and Azeri tar and the Turkish saz (spelled mizrap in that case), as well as the little hammers used to play the santoor (known as santouri in Greek) with. Snapping the finger back is called rast, shooting it forward is called chap. An alternating back-and-forth pattern is called dorab and the tremolo riz.
I find back-and-forth to be a better translation than up- and downstrokes.

The tuning consists of three courses; one octave pair for the bass and two single strings. The Cc G c used here might be the most common pitch. This is the same interval that the six string bouzouki is using, just a whole tone up in Dd A(A) d(d), so all I had to do was remove the unison strings. Think of it as a modal tuning, or an open one - Neither major, nor minor. Or a 5 chord or a power chord.

The setar closely related to the Greek tambouras and bouzouki and the Iranian and Kurdish tanbur (tembur) and dotar (dutar). Thus, what the fretting hand does is nearly identical. It has a microtonal neck, fretted with lines of gut. The tuning and frets are moved according to mode conventions, as well as personal taste. The word tar means “string” in Persian and se ”three”. So it means “three string” (or “three course”), plain and simple. Just like saz in Turkish is a catch-all term that means “stringed instrument”, tar was and is used for many Persian and Iranian instruments.

#tambouras