Greek baglamas played in Albanian sharki style - gg D aa tuning

The sharki is related to the two course Albanian çifteli (qifteli). It dwarfs it by size and scale length, but is not a bass or baritone version of that. It is it's own instrument, with three courses. The playing style is similar, but not identical, as you will see. The thumb use and alternate picking is much heavier. It too is played in Northern Albania, Kosovo and FYRO Macedonia. The size can be compared to a Greek bouzouki or a larger Turkish saz, such as the divan. A closely related instrument is the šargija of Bosnia and Serbia, both in name and stringing.

I have seen fretboards with a fully chromatic or diatonic scale, as well as partial frets (covering one or two of the three courses) which were placed either chromatically, or microtonally. They are fixed metal. These options give the instrument a greater range than the cifteli. The 2-1-2 used here is a very common stringing. I demonstrate the often used gg D aa tuning, which is re-entrant. Players move this up or down a semitone or two, depending on their scale length and string gauge.

I imitate this on my baglamas, the smallest instrument of the Greek bouzouki family. It has a standard tuning of (D)d (a)a dd, so I needed to switch my bass string out for a second unwound treble and my middle string for a wound bass. People use Turkish saz plectrums (called dridhse in Albanian or tezene in Turkish) or a guitar pick to pluck.

Now, I do know that şark means 'East' in Turkish and that şarkı (back vowel, not front) is the term for a movement within a composition in classical Ottoman art music. A friend told me that it could stem from the Arabic shaʿra, which means 'knowledge' or 'perception'. It also denotes some forms of poetry in Arabic, as well as in Persian as she'r.

#tambouras