85719 - Transcription: The universal diversity of Music

N. Lygeros

Let’s talk about the merlin. The idea is the following. We have four strings, one, one and two. There is a difference also for the distance, here, between the classical guitar, and we can see that we have in fact the same, but here is double. So, we have D, A, D. That’s all. This is common to another instrument, this one, a small one, baglamas. We have here six strings, two, two, two, for only three notes, the same in reality. It’s quite different from the other classical tuning. But the idea is to have something which is the same at the beginning and at the end like the Merlin. The big difference, because we use to play the merlin like a guitar, for the guitar in fact we have the same thing for the E, so the same notes on the first string and the sixth string and at the end, I mean we have to recall these four strings but also these, because we can find with those four strings the same thing in another way with the mandolin. So, we can see here with the mandolin, we will get this sound and we have a G, a D, as you can hear and after that, an A and an E. Here everything is written, here we have a lack, the certification as you can see because in reality with the Merlin and not of course with the mandolin we play in a diatonic way. The idea is that we have only notes with two in reality sharp and at the end you can imagine that we have the same thing with this accordion, a Cajun accordion, so as you hear it, like this. So, if you do everything, we understand that we have in reality two completely different instruments, the merlin and  the accordion. But they are working in the same shape, I mean the musical shape and this shape is the same with the baglamas. But we play this instrument like a guitar, like this one, which is from Spain. This is from Canada, this is from United States of America and they are also from Israel and from Greece. The idea is to understand what is the common between those quite different instruments. But at the end they play in the same scale. So, here we have diatonic, diatonic, here we have chromatic, chromatic and of course chromatic, but with the same suite. So, it was interesting to see that this instrument, which is in fact rather new, it’s a creation of Canada but it has an old past. The past is the dulcimer and even before we had an instrument in the Middle Age in Europe. So we have a legacy. And we can imagine that this instrument in fact is the future of the future of the previous instrument, so there is a link, there is a bridge and now if we explain all these we have a reconstruction of the idea which made this instrument which is simple. And that’s the point. It is robust but the idea is to have only one traditional scale to play all the traditional music as we can do it with the accordion. And we play it like a guitar and not  like a dulcimer which is plane in this position and we can do it of course with the picking, with fingers or also using this smart accessorize. The idea is to show that we have big differences but at the end, at the core, we have the same thing.