The ukelin is a stringed musical instrument made popular in the United States in the 1920s. It is a bowed psaltery with zither strings, and its name derives from the ukulele (which was first made in Portugal but was popularized in Hawaii) and the violin. It lost popularity prior to the 1970s because the instrument was difficult to play and often returned to the manufacturer before it was completely paid for.
The history of the ukelin is hard to trace, since there were several instruments resembling the ukelin that were produced in the 1920s. Paul F. Richter filed the first known ukelin patent in December 1924; it was granted in April 1926. [1] The Phonoharp Company, which merged with Oscar Schmidt, Inc. the same year, began producing ukelins in 1926. However, an instrument greatly resembling the ukelin had had its patent filed in 1923, a year before Richter filed his. Yet the patent, filed by John Large, was only granted after Richter's patent had already been given. Another similar instrument had a patent filed by Walter Schmidt in 1925. Because of these patents filed one after the other, it is unclear who invented the first ukelin. [2]
Violinist Henry Charles Marx was one of the first to sell what he called a violin-uke, among many other instruments he created to be manufactured by his company, Marxochime Colony. He was thought to be the first to manufacture the instrument but soon had his design copied by International Music Company, which sold it under the name ukelin. The Phonoharp Company sold Richter's design before merging with Oscar Schmidt in 1926. [3] Marxochime and Oscar Schmidt International, Inc. sold their instruments door-to-door through traveling salesmen, often to poor rural families. The salesmen would purchase the instruments from the company and then sell them at an inflated price, often on a payment plan. These prices increased as the economy grew stronger after the Depression. The customers were sometimes told that they were buying the instrument at a reduced price compared to a music store, but there is no evidence that they were sold in music stores. [2] The instruments were usually sold for $35-$40. [4]
The ukelin has sixteen melody and sixteen bass strings, divided into four groups for playing accompanying chords. Each group has one large bass string and three smaller chord strings. The ukelin is placed on the table in front of the player. The melody strings are played with a bow in the right hand, and the bass strings are plucked or strummed with the left hand's fingernails or a pick. [3] The ukelin is tuned to a C major scale and, unless tuned to include them, is unable to play chromatic notes; therefore, it is limited in what it can play. For ease of playing for amateurs, the strings are given numbers, and the booklets that were sold with the ukelin would give these numbers a tabulature notation, instead of notes on a staff, for playing simple songs. [5]
Ukelins were sold to people who thought that the instrument was easy to play, but this was not the case. They were also quite limited as to what they could play because they were designed as diatonic instruments. [6] As a result, many instruments were returned to the manufacturers, who ended up with piles of instruments that they couldn't sell. Salesmen misrepresented the instruments to customers, who felt as if they had been tricked into buying a worthless instrument. Oscar Schmidt, Inc. stopped producing the ukelin in 1964 after the new owner, Glen Peterson, discovered the shady business practices of some of his salesmen. Between instrument returns and a declining interest in musical instruments due to the advent of television as a form of family entertainment, Marxochime could no longer produce the violin-uke and halted production in 1972. [2]
The double bass, also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched chordophone in the modern symphony orchestra. Similar in structure to the cello, it has four or five strings.
The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted and typically has six or twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A guitar pick may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either acoustically, by means of a resonant hollow chamber on the guitar, or amplified by an electronic pickup and an amplifier.
A mandolin is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of eight strings. A variety of string types are used, with steel strings being the most common and usually the least expensive. The courses are typically tuned in an interval of perfect fifths, with the same tuning as a violin. Also, like the violin, it is the soprano member of a family that includes the mandola, octave mandolin, mandocello and mandobass.
The ukulele, also called a uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and popularized in Hawaii. It generally employs four nylon strings.
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orchestration is the assignment of different instruments to play the different parts of a musical work. For example, a work for solo piano could be adapted and orchestrated so that an orchestra could perform the piece, or a concert band piece could be orchestrated for a symphony orchestra.
In musical instrument classification, string instruments or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
Zithers are a class of stringed instruments. Historically, it could be any instrument of the psaltery family. In modern terminology, it is more specifically an instrument consisting of many strings stretched across a thin, flat body, the topic of this article.
An autoharp or chord zither is a string instrument belonging to the zither family. It uses a series of bars individually configured to mute all strings other than those needed for the intended chord. The term autoharp was once a trademark of the Oscar Schmidt company, but has become a generic designation for all such instruments, regardless of manufacturer.
In music, inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency.
Scordatura is a tuning of a string instrument that is different from the normal, standard tuning. It typically attempts to allow special effects or unusual chords or timbre, or to make certain passages easier to play. It is common to notate the finger position as if played in regular tuning, while the actual pitch resulting is altered. When all the strings are tuned by the same interval up or down, as in the case of the viola in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra, the part is transposed as a whole.
The pedal steel guitar is a console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than other steel guitar designs. Like all steel guitars, it can play unlimited glissandi and deep vibrati—characteristics it shares with the human voice. Pedal steel is most commonly associated with Country music and Hawaiian music.
Steinberger is a series of distinctive electric guitars and bass guitars, designed and originally manufactured by Ned Steinberger. The name "Steinberger" can be used to refer to either the instruments themselves or the company that originally produced them. Although the name has been applied to a variety of instruments, it is primarily associated with a minimalist "headless" design of electric basses and guitars.
The Marxophone is a fretless zither played via a system of metal hammers. It features two octaves of double melody strings in the key of C major, and four sets of chord strings. Sounding somewhat like a mandolin, the Marxophone's timbre is also reminiscent of various types of hammered dulcimers.
The bowed psaltery is a type of psaltery or zither that is played with a bow. In contrast with the centuries-old plucked psaltery, the bowed psaltery appears to be a 20th-century invention.
The guitar zither is a musical instrument consisting of a sound-box with two sets of unstopped strings. One set of strings is tuned to the diatonic, chromatic, or partially chromatic scale and the other set is tuned to make the various chords in the principal key of the melody strings.
A string band is an old-time music or jazz ensemble made up mainly or solely of string instruments. String bands were popular in the 1920s and 1930s, and are among the forerunners of modern country music and bluegrass. While being active countrywide, in Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs they are a huge part of its musical culture and traditions, appearing, among others, in the yearly Mummers Parade.
The violin, viola and cello were first built in the early 16th century, in Italy. The earliest evidence for their existence is in paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari from the 1530s, though Ferrari's instruments had only three strings. The Académie musicale, a treatise written in 1556 by Philibert Jambe de Fer, gives a clear description of the violin family much as we know it today.
Kroncong is the name of a ukulele-like instrument and an Indonesian musical style that typically makes use of the kroncong. A kroncong orchestra or ensemble traditionally consists of a flute, a violin, at least one, but usually a pair of kroncongs, a cello in Pizzicato style, string bass in pizzicato style, and a vocalist. Kroncong originated as an adaptation of a Portuguese musical tradition, brought by sailors to Indonesian port cities in the 16th century. By the late 19th century, kroncong reached popular music status throughout the Indonesian archipelago.
Oscar Schmidt was a musical instrument manufacturing company established in 1871. During its long existence, Oscar Schmidt has produced a wide range of string instruments, not only guitars but also numerous models of parlour instruments such as autoharps, celtic harps, guitar zithers, the "guitarophone", marxophones and bowed psalteries.
John Juzek(néJanek Jůzek, akaJan, akaJohann;1892, Písek – c. 1965, Luby) was a Czech merchant, widely known in North America as an exporter of violins, violas, cellos, and double basses made and labeled under his anglicized name, "John Juzek," crafted mostly by guilds and various independent makers in the Bohemia region of the Czechoslovakia and Germany border.