A-sharp is the same note as B-flat, and D-sharp is the same as E-flat, and so on. Australian-born singer Shirley Abicair popularised the chord zither when she used it for accompaniment in her TV shows, live performances and recordings in Britain in the 1950s and '60s. Anton Karas and Ruth Welcome used instruments of similar design to the one illustrated. It has become something of a truism that most zithers seen today are either 60 or 110 years old. This results in the lower fretted strings having no pitches (or no chromatic pitches) available above the 12th fret, while the higher fretted strings still have higher chromatic pitches available at these half-frets. The 4/16 chord-zither became the standard single-strung 4-chord zither model for the Oscar Schmidt Company in later years of zither production, from about the 1930s onward. Favorite Add to Vintage Zither Harp AtelierSeeds. For example: Canadian musician Jeff Healey, featured in the film thriller Road House in 1989, used a zither technique to play electric guitar. Historically, it has been applied to any instrument of the cittern family, or to an instrument consisting of many strings stretched across a thin, flat body – similar to a psaltery. This instrument can be tuned in either the Key of G (shown on tuning chart) or in the Key of D or C. To change to the Key of D, raise all Cs to C#s. Tuning is two octaves in the Key of G. The lowest G on this instrument is the next G above middle C. Easy to play with tune cards. However, our hammered dulcimer tuning wrenches or our Duo-Tune Zither will work! Although interest in the zither had once more begun to wane by the late 1960s, owing to the two American vogues there are still many used instruments to be found, in various states of disrepair. These two tuning methods are known as Munich and Viennese tuning. The Alpine zither has 42 strings, and differs from the concert zither primarily in requiring the addition of an extension to the body of the instrument to support both the longer additional contrabass strings and their tuners. The zither has a 2 Octave range. Tuning chart for concert and Alpine zithers: The zither is played by plucking the strings while it lies flat on a table (which acts as a resonator to amplify the sound), or it can be held on the lap. The smallest nudge can cause the harp to go out of tune… Categories include Bar zithers (made up of musical bows and stick zithers), tube zithers, raft zithers, board zithers (includes box zithers, ground zithers and harp zithers), trough zithers and frame zithers. Rees has been building harps since 1972. "Classification of Musical Instruments: Translated from the Original German by Anthony Baines and Klaus P. Wachsmann", "Source and stream: early music and living traditions in China", "The 101 strangest records on Spotify: Ruth Welcome – Romantic Zither", "The Twilight Zone (1959) s01e33 Episode Script - SS", "Zither collection of the University of Leipzig", Anton Karas page by his Grandson (English version), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Zither&oldid=1012227635, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz instrument identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 15 March 2021, at 08:25. Full Viennese tuning is normally used only on instruments with 38 or fewer strings. The recently rediscovered recordings of the gospel singer Washington Phillips, who used two instruments simultaneously, have revealed the virtuosic capability of the chord zither to modern musicians seeking to revive it. Chord zithers similar to the instrument in the photograph also became popular in North America during the late 19th and early 20th century. Things You Will Need The 4/16 chord-zither became the standard single-strung 4-chord zither model for the Oscar Schmidt Company in later years of zither production, from about the 1930s onward. These variants all use metal strings, similar to the cittern. The material that follows includes information about tuning, holding, fingering, chording and improvising. Many of these instruments have been sampled electronically, and are available in instrument banks for music synthesizers.