solarbird | well that's neat (Reply)

annathepiper has an Irish bouzouki that's always had a rather muddy tone; the company who made it mostly made dulcimers and I think I see why. But anyway, I thought new strings would help, and after a rather longer story than is interesting^* I managed to get a couple of sets of new strings, and they did help, a bit. I'd also like to put in a mandolin-style bridge instead of the weird bridge that's on it now that I'm quite sure does it no favours at all.

But it turns out that what really, really helps - even with the current weird bridge - is putting on new strings, capoing up a fifth, and treating it like a mandola, except with octave-separated lower strings. That sounds a lot better.

It also sounds better played softer, even when not capoed, which is useful as well. But to make it sound actually good, it's better turned into a half-mandola half-bouzouki. Call it a Bouzoukola.

So that's today's musical adventure. The rest of the day was cooking, and buying stuff for cooking, and the previous post. The Portal cake has so far worked out fine. It's a lot of work, it better end up tasting good or I'm gonna be cranky. er. Crankier. Or something.

^*: Srsly crazymaking. I ended up writing this document on Irish bouzoukis and their two kinds of stringing vs. Greek bouzoukis and their two kinds of stringing and giving it to a string website and a music store because neither of them had any of their data right, or even knew the difference between the two instruments, or in one case, even knew exactly what they were selling.