Just amazing. Strange instruments eventually gets us to the great pigeonhole classification project. I'm waiting for the debate over whether they are folk or traditional to start soon. Just a joke group, just a joke.***smile***

The problem here is that instrument development did not happen in only one place, at only one time, in a linear fashion. Whenever the cultural crossovers occurred there would also be some wacky combinations appear. The last time this nuttiness swept upon the world was turn of the century U.S.A. Perhaps it was their form of Y2K. Over about 40 years we saw some mondo bizzarro combos. The only stringed instrument that survived the period to prosper in this century, is commonly known as the autoharp...and alas, we screwed the pooch immediately, 'cause it ain't a harp!!! It's a chorded zither. But then who in the hell would buy an autozither? Okay, possibly Duane and Bill, but for the rest of us, the word is just too weird.

Alright, let me try to be serious for a moment. Everyone has touched upon some points, but the musicologist types will tell you that instruments where the sound is produced by the vibration of string(s) are called "Chordophones." Chordophones are then divided into five major categories: Bows, Lyres, Harps, Lutes, and Zithers. It is now time to break out the NoDoz cause most of us will fall asleep through all the various mutations into sub-sub-sub categories, and once again encounter zither prejudice when we find the Aeolian Harp is really a form of "long" zither.

In the major categories, the relationship of string to some kind of "body" provides the class difference. A bow is a string or strings attached at each end to a curved stick. Well, duh. Moving on, a harp has strings running at some oblique angle from the soundbox to the neck. A lyre is generally 4 sided and the strings run from the soundbox, across some type of bridge, to a crossbar supported by 2 uprights. Zithers have strings running across elevated bridges for the entire length of a resonant body(doesn't have to be hollow). Lutes have strings running from somewhere near the base of a resonant body, across a bridge, over the body to the end of the neck.

The banjo is a variant on an African long necked lute.
Hammered Dulcimer is a board zither variant.
Appalachian Dulcimer is a version of a long zither.
The guitar is a lute.
Fiddles are bowed lutes.

Musical tastes within a specific culture, availability of materials, cultural exploration and spread, and other factors determined the rise and fall of many instruments, stringed and otherwise. For more info on that subject, find an anthropologist who will be happy to elaborate ( if you can wake them up). Personally I'm putting myself to sleep.

Next up, we stick a bagpipe chanter into the mouthpipe of a tuba and a banjo down the bell...call it a harp of some sort, of course...then we throw the works onto a busy freeway at rush hour, and save the world from another wacko, semi-musical surprise.

catspaw