Jouhikko/Tagelharpa
Adventures with 'other' instruments...
I actually made the instrument and the bow. This is the second jouhikko I’ve built. It takes inspiration from my teacher’s Karelian style instrument. The body is yellow birch, the soundboard is cedar, and the strings are horsehair.
There are loads of makers out there now, but relatively few seem able to actually play their own instruments, which makes me fear that I’d be fighting the instrument more than playing it. I know that Michael King has an excellent reputation as a builder and would enjoy trying one of his. Rauno Nieminen built my teacher’s jouhikko and I’d love to play one of his some day. But for now I can’t justify the cost of buying one from either maker. So I built my own.
And yes, I do play the outer string fairly often in this tune. It is the first Melody note. (I’ve tried typing that M repeatedly in lower case, but my phone thinks I’m wrong and keeps capitalizing it, which is the sort of behavior that makes me want to trade it in for a flip phone!)
The tuning is D4 A4 E4. So the drone string is a fourth below the D, which is the key note.
The principal distinction between the jouhikko and the talharpa, as I understand it, is that the jouhikko has an arched bridge so I can engage only two strings at a time. The talharpa has a flat bridge and the bow gets all the strings at once.
I’m clearly still a raw beginner. This is after 4 lessons. But I’m working on posture and bowing technique and left finger positions. There’s a lot that has to come together to play this thing!
I’ll try to post pics of just the instrument. After I finish my chores for the day. Saturday is always so full of catching up on things I don’t have time for during the week.
Patrick
