Irish bouzouki Information

[Twilo123]

Originally Posted by philjs

Wikipedia has a page with history, etc. if that's what you're looking for.

From my experience, the names of these things (at least in "Celtic" parlance) are somewhat interchangeable. The best name I've seen is that it's a CBOM (eg, a cittern-bouzouki-octave mandolin) family instrument. To my mind (and keep in mind that I'm often wrong) cittern's have 5 courses (though there are 5 course OMs and mandolas) and bouzoukis and OMs have 4 with the difference between the latter two being that bouzoukis are generally long-scale (often 660mm, 26" scale) and most often have octave strings on the two bass pairs. Robbin Bullock has a great article on these "things with strings."

That being said, Alec Finn of DeDannan still plays a 3 course DAD-tuned Greek bouzouki and it works well for his style of playing. I've always liked Donal Lunny's name for his: blarge (which, I've read, comes from the early Abnett flat-top builds that an instrument dealer in Ireland coded for his stock list as Bouzouki, Large). They're now found in many "traditional" musics including Scandinavian (most prominently Ale Moller but also early Roger Tallroth in Vasen), Breton (many players, most inflenced by Scotsman Jamie McMenemy of Kornog) and Galician/Asturien (eg Elias Garcia of Llan de Cubel and Ruben Bada of DRD and John McSherry's "At First Light").

Personally, I play a bouzar (the name coined by Stefan Sobell for the guitar-shaped bouzoukis that he first made for Andy Irvine) which is basically a tenor guitar (standard 585mm, 23" scale) with doubled courses that I tune to GDGC rather than the standard tenor guitar CGDA (same as a viola, that is an octave above the cello) or modern DGBE (high four strings of standard guitar tuning). GDGC just suits me better (I'm a DADGAD guitar player and the GDGC intervals are the same as DADG) than GDAD or GDAE. I also find that this tuning suits some of the "other" traditional music styles, eg Swedish, Asturien, etc.) better than "Irish" tuning.

To the OP: Google is your friend! A quick search for "irish bouzouki" or "irish bouzouki makers" will turn up oodles of sites that will answer many of your questions. For example, the first link under "irish bouzouki makers" is a HUGE list of luthiers that make CBOM instruments...

Phil

Yes I have googled and have done some research on them. Most posts are on mandolin forum which I am not active on yet but makes total sense. Was just wondering if anyone had direct experience on here since I have joined this forum. Thanks for the info though. Much appreciated!

[MikeBmusic]

Do a youtube search for the Newfoundland band Great Big Sea. Both Bob Hallet (multi-instrumentalist) and Alan Doyle (lead singer, guitarist) play them on occasion, and they work well for Celtic-maritime sounding songs and some pop-style as well.

[K-vegas]

Originally Posted by fetellier

That is why I build mine at 24.9 as I can reach the melody notes as that scale length works well on a guitar. The problem I find is the melody requires a 4 or even 5 fret stretch which I can handle though I am finding the Octave Mando at 22.5" scale very easy to play but needs much larger strings to get enough power when chording at an acoustic session.

Yep. I have a gibson tenor guitar with 22 3/4 and melody in the first position is too much for me. Fun with capo tho

[Twilo123]

these are a couple of articles i have found on the subject (in case anyone else is interested):

http://theunofficialmartinguitarforu...9#.VDMXhildWzv

http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...rn-vs-bouzouki