Çifteli: This microtonal instrument changed the way I think about music

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[no_wrong_notes]

It truly is amazing how much the YouTube recording artist community just benefited from a $20 thrift store purchase. Thank you for all the work you put into these videos, you are very talented.

[cactusowo]

"I'm not only a samplist, i'm also the creator of decent sampler"
Didn't expected this kind of surprise, didn't knew DS had microtonal support now!

[cagraydn]

As a Turkish guy, i can add another fun fact. Althought, it's an Albanian instrument, it's name came from Turkish. Its original name is actually "çiftetelli". In Turkish, lets split it as Çift-e-tel-li

"Çift" means couple, the "e" after it is a suffix but doesn't add any meaning. "Tel" means "string" and the "li" is a possessive suffix.

Summing up, Çifteli means "double stringed" in Turkish :D

[furkansafak]

I am Turkish and I find this incredible! Thank you so much for putting the effort to create the 'Albanian Scale'. I will try to incorporate this into a psytrance track 🙂👽

[arlwiss]

I'd call this a win for the preservation of a local music culture

[hkrasniqi]

As an albanian, seeing a non-albanian going this long road to add such value to our music tradition and offer such great possibilities to young artists and whoever that decides to create music, and for free... such an honour.
You my friend have earned a most deserved like, and a very loyal subscription. God bless you 🇦🇱

[handle_with_caution]

Being an Albanian, coder, and music maker, this hit home so so so hard. I've tried my hand at making JUCE plugins, but never found much success. This was so informative and inspiring!

[AKATHESAUR]

As an albanian, i really enjoyed this video, thank you for covering the beauty of Çiftelija. I grew up being annoyed by it and hating it since I had to listen to it every day, but i found a new appreciation.

[MimozaHmusic]

Im a musician originally from Kosovo, and I have been thinking about incorporating our traditional çifteli in my next music project, and this is such a great timing to look into your sampling bank! Thank you for doing all this work to bring this amazing intstrument to a wider audience

[kalaAssasin]

This reminds me of how I was when I discovered the existence of a Scandinavian folk instrument called the tagelharpa (also called bowed lyre) it has 2, 3 or 4 strings. One of which is the one you play your melodies while the others are drone strings. The strings are also made of horsehair and you use a bow to play it. After going down the tagelharpa rabbit hole, I decided to build my own. And it is currently my favorite instrument. It has such a raw sound that is unlike anything I've heard before

[coryroberts]

10 years ago I came across a used baglama on craigslist... I forked over the $50 not really knowing what I was getting into.... it led me down a path that has opened my eyes, or rather my mind and ears to a wider possibility in music. I am much grateful for that. This region of the world has magical music.

[era]

This video made me tear up for whatever reason. As an Albanian and a musician (who was classically trained, I don’t play Albanian folk music) I’m so amazed at you, a non-Albanian musician, have so much respect and such a beautiful appreciation for our national instrument. The fact that this is getting out to a non-Albanian audience as well is so exciting and nice to see. You’re educating people who may have not known about this side of music and can gain something from your experiences. I even learned things I didn’t know about the çifteli myself! Fantastic video, man. Keep it up.

[GuitarUniverse]

Absolutely fantastic! As a teacher of music theory for the past 30 years, the division of the octave, and how it is applied to various musical instruments has fascinated me. The relationship between culture, the environment, materials used for instrument, making, and the influences of outside of the culture result in a vibrant, musical world. For example, the piano was developed in northern Europe, where there are plenty of hardwood trees, the ability to create strong metal, and the ability to manufacture strings of different with, and length. Compare the weather and the environment of northern Europe to the subcontinent of India. In India, we can see that it makes total sense that one of the primary instruments is the sitar. The sitar is constructed of a gourd, which is grown inside of a box like wooden structure that forms, the appropriate size and shape for the main part of the instrument one can’t imagine people in England, growing gourds and shaping them into a musical instrument. In India, there are of course, pianos that arrived with a British. They are very very difficult to maintain because of the monsoons, the humidity, and the heat. Factor in religious, class, and financial considerations, and we can readily understand that the human desire to make music will manifest itself in thousands of different ways. Another fascinating, at least to me, concept is the relationship between the human body and instruments, if one sits at a full piano keyboard, we can see that the size of the piano fits perfectly with the adult human who has stretched out their left and right arms! That’s an obvious example, but it goes deeper than that. Human beings have eardrums that are of a certain size and the size is restricted by our physiology. If human beans were twice the size, then it stands to reason that our eardrums would be bigger, and that we could then hear lower and higher frequencies than we do and if human beings were, on average, 10 to 12 feet tall instead of 5 to 6 feet tall, then we would be making pianos much larger and with a greater harmonic range than we do now. Finally, there is the difference between playing a stringed instrument and, for example, a woodwind instrument Flutes, for example, are not confined to the structures of a fretted instrument, and can therefore play Quarter tones, microtones, and everything in between. And culture is so very important. Here in the west, we grow up listening to the octave divided by 12. So when we hear microtonal Music, it sounds off to us, it sounds “out of tune”. Quite a few of my students in my music theory classes over the years have been from cultures/countries, like Turkey. They have told me that, setting aside the massive, cultural influx of western influences, the 12 note, diatonic scale sounds off to them. They also tell me that they feel constricted, because suddenly they are going from an octave divided by 52 to an octave divided by 12. I am an old man now, and when I was young, I used to dream about what the future would look like AND SOUND LIKE. but I never imagined living in the world of today, a world in which, via the Internet, musicians could immediately connect with one another. The influences of West and East are coming together to create a new vocabulary. Learning to speak, and communicate with this new vocabulary is, and has been, one of the main goals of my artistic life. Cheers!

[swatforce]

I must say that decent sampler is simply one of the best libraries ever. Not only is a lot of it free, but it is extremely high quality. The really amazing part about it though is the fact that you can find exotic instruments and sounds on there, which you can't find anywhere else, or only in an expensive exotic instrument bundle. So great work, and keep going! it really helps music producers like me. Thanks a lot🙏

[klvynnnnnn]

Im an albanian producer and this is amazing, Thank you for making this! This so much fun🇦🇱

[JuanjoNarive]

I am a guitar player, also married to an Albanian, she and her family introduced me to the Çiftelija during last vacation and was a very interesting experience, thanks for promoting such a beautiful instrument.

[showvika]

I lived in Albania for a year and had the privilege to listen to the maestros live. Thank you for explaining the technical aspects of this traditional instrument!

[BourkeTommy]

I’m currently living in Albania. I’ve been here for a couple years now. Wasn’t expecting to be scrolling YouTube and see that you found a çiftili in Philadelphia. Glad the unique music from this region inspired you to accomplish microtonal use in DS. I’m a user of DS and love what you’ve created!

[iShadowDragon]

This was really cool. There are a lot of other tuning systems, for instance, Iranian music uses something called Radif which is very extensive. A lot of the nations in the Middle East such as Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic and... use the same scale as Radif. The interesting part is that each nation has its own taste.

[dianapines]

I grew up hearing my family members play the Cifteli. I'm Albanian, but I grew up in the U.S. and never learned how to speak the language.
However, A few months ago, I wanted to learn how to play the cifteli myself (I assumed that it would be easy since I play guitar), but I was barely able to find information on how to even tune the strings Lol,
Even after I tuned it though, I just gave it up after hearing those "off" notes because I had no idea how to even approach that whole situation Loll. Almost all of the information online about the Cifteli is in Albanian or some other language, or just very hard to find in general.
Seeing this video in my recommended today was just such an incredibly pleasant surprise, (and also just surprisingly convenient timing.) I really dont know what else to say other than thank you!! Theres so much useful information in this video. I'm like.. as targeted as a target audience can get for this video