A lute is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted.
The oud is a Middle Eastern short-neck lute-type, pear-shaped, fretless stringed instrument, usually with 11 strings grouped in six courses, but some models have five or seven courses, with 10 or 13 strings respectively.
The dombra, also known as dombyra, is a long-necked musical string instrument used by the Kazakhs, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Nogais, Bashkirs, and Tatars in their traditional folk music. The dombra shares certain characteristics with the komuz and dutar instruments, such as its long, thin neck and oblong body shape. It is a popular instrument mostly among Turkic communities in Central Asian countries.
A fret is any of the thin strips of material, usually metal wire, inserted laterally at specific positions along the neck or fretboard of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. On some historical instruments and non-European instruments, frets are made of pieces of string tied around the neck.
The bouzouki is a musical instrument popular in the West Asia, Europe and Balkans. It is a member of the long-necked lute family, with a round body with a flat and a long neck with a fretted fingerboard. It has steel strings and is played with a plectrum producing a sharp metallic sound, reminiscent of a mandolin but pitched lower. It is the precursor to the Irish bouzouki, an instrument derived from the Greek bouzouki that is popular in Celtic, English, and North American folk music. There are 3 main types of Greek bouzouki: the trichordo (three-course) has three pairs of strings the tetrachordo (four-course) has four pairs of strings, & then the pentachordo (five-course) with 5 pairs of strings. The instrument was brought to Greece in the early 1900s by Greek refugees from Anatolia, and quickly became the central instrument to the rebetiko genre and its music branches. It is now an important element of modern Laïko pop Greek music.
The tanpura is a long-necked, plucked, four-stringed instrument originating in the Indian subcontinent, found in various forms in Indian music. Visually, the tanpura resembles a simplified sitar or similar lute-like instrument, and is likewise crafted out of a gourd or pumpkin.
The cümbüş is a Turkish stringed instrument of relatively modern origin. It was developed in 1930 by Zeynel Abidin Cümbüş as an oud-like instrument that could be heard as part of a larger ensemble.
Tamburica or tamboura refers to a family of long-necked lutes popular in Southeast Europe and Central Europe, especially Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovenia. It is also known in Burgenland, Austria. All took their name and some characteristics from the Persian tanbur but also resemble the mandolin and guitar in the sense that its strings are plucked and often paired. The frets may be moveable to allow the playing of various modes. The variety of tamburica shapes known today were developed in Serbia and Croatia by a number of indigenous contributors near the end of the 19th century.
Digenes Akritas is a medieval Greek romantic epic that emerged in the 12th-century Byzantine Empire. It is the lengthiest and most famous of the acritic songs, Byzantine folk poems celebrating the lives and exploits of the Akritai, the inhabitants and frontier guards of the empire's eastern Anatolian provinces. The acritic songs represented the remnants of an ancient epic cycle in Byzantium and, due to their long oral transmission throughout the empire, the identification of precise references to historical events may be only conjectural. Set during the Arab-Byzantine wars, the poem reflects the interactions, along with the military and cultural conflicts of the two polities. The epic consists of between 3,000 to 4,000 lines and it has been pieced together following the discovery of several manuscripts. An extensive narrative text, it is often thought of as the only surviving Byzantine work truly qualifying as epic poetry. Written in a form of vernacular Greek, it is regarded as one of its earliest examples, as well as the starting point of Modern Greek literature.
A setar is a stringed instrument, a type of lute used in Persian traditional music, played solo or accompanying voice. It is a member of the tanbur family of long-necked lutes with a range of more than two and a half octaves. Originally a three stringed instrument, a fourth string was added by Mushtaq Ali Shah by the mid 19th century. It is played with the index finger of the right hand.
The pandura or pandore, an ancient Greek string instrument, belonged in the broad class of the lute and guitar instruments. Akkadians played similar instruments from the 3rd millennium BC. Ancient Greek artwork depicts such lutes from the 3rd or 4th century BC onward.
The buzuq is a long-necked fretted lute related to the Greek bouzouki and Iranian and Turkish saz.
In Indian classical music, javārī refers to the overtone-rich "buzzing" sound characteristic of classical Indian string instruments such as the tanpura, sitar, surbahar, rudra veena and Sarasvati veena. Javari can refer to the acoustic phenomenon itself, or to the meticulously carved bone, ivory or wooden bridges that support the strings on the sounding board and produce this particular effect. A similar sort of bridge is used on traditional Ethiopian lyres, as well as on the ancient Greek kithara, and the "bray pins" of some early European harps operated on the same principle. A similar sound effect, called sawari, is used on some traditional Japanese instruments as well.
The yaylı tambur is a bowed long-neck lute from Turkey. Derived from the older plucked mızraplı tambur variant of the Turkish tambur, it has a long, fretted neck and a round metal or wooden soundbox which is often covered on the front with a skin or acrylic head similar to that of a banjo.
The term Tanbur can refer to various long-necked string instruments originating in Mesopotamia, Southern or Central Asia. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "terminology presents a complicated situation. Nowadays the term tanbur is applied to a variety of distinct and related long-necked lutes used in art and folk traditions. Similar or identical instruments are also known by other terms." These instruments are used in the traditional music of Iran, Iraq, India, Armenia, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Turkey, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.
The tambur is a fretted string instrument of Turkey and the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. There are two variants, one of which is played with a plectrum and the other with a bow. The player is called a tamburî.
The lavta is a plucked string music instrument from Istanbul.
The tarhu is a type of string instrument invented by Australian musician and craftsman Peter Biffin during the 1980s. The tarhu has a long slender neck made of Blackwood, a small round body also made of Blackwood, and four strings about the length of 80 cm It is a flexible instrument that can be played in both plucked and bowed styles derived from both eastern and western cultures.
Lutes are stringed musical instruments that include a body and "a neck which serves both as a handle and as a means of stretching the strings beyond the body".
